[HN Gopher] It's probably time to rethink "Building in public"
___________________________________________________________________
It's probably time to rethink "Building in public"
Author : laike9m
Score : 103 points
Date : 2024-09-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (laike9m.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (laike9m.com)
| autocole wrote:
| I'm not sure I understood the author's point. This write up
| sounds like a collection of thoughts and observations about
| trends and the now saturated landscape of "build in
| public"/"indie hackers"
|
| I'd like to have heard some perspective from people actively
| participating in this and how their experiences have been
| candiddevmike wrote:
| IME, people who are building in public seem to spend more time
| letting people know they're building in public than actually
| building.
| barrell wrote:
| When I started indie hacking, I looked around for how to grow
| an audience. Tried to model what various successful posters
| were doing, which lasted about a week, because turns out it's
| like a full time job.
|
| References, spreadsheets, scheduling, analytics, sourcing,
| markets, targeting, timing optimization, drafting, research,
| etc.
|
| It gave me a lot more appreciation for the people who grow a
| large audience in this sort of manner, but also made it clear
| that it's not for me. There isn't enough time in the day for
| me to build the products I want to, I'll just have to settle
| for posting randomly whatever I feel like.
|
| PS:, recently there seems to have been some changes to the x
| algorithm. Just spontaneously posting and even shitposting
| seems to be doing a lot better than the formulaic stuff from
| a few years ago. YMMV
| blitzar wrote:
| Letting people know how strong your grindset is requires 4am
| starts and grinding out social media threads all weekend.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| I think the idea is as a growth hacking strategy, people lost
| their way. The space is crowded and now it usually means people
| are posting positive numbers go up charts. What value is in
| that? Why is my chart more engaging than other people's charts?
|
| It's not interesting, engaging, or educational. So as an growth
| strategy, it sharply slumps off after the initial launch post,
| and there's zero value to the reader aside from knowing it
| exists (again, initial launch post).
|
| So it's a call to arms to reevaluate what you're doing. If
| you're posting number goes up, it's really no different from
| building in private, it's likely a wasted effort on your part
| and unnecessary noise to the community. Or maybe return to the
| old meaning of building in public. Create value for people,
| actually have a dialogue, and that'll pay dividends (that's the
| hope anyways) .
| scubakid wrote:
| _Based on my observation, out of 10 "build in public" posts,
| probably 5 or 6 are sharing revenue_
|
| Based on my observation, all the social platforms are now
| circling the drain of optimizing for engagement, and posts about
| $$$ get 100x higher engagement than posts about product
| development insights, reflections, etc.
|
| So the small subset of posts that actually make it to your
| timeline to be observed are often the ones about money.
|
| That's been my experience building in public so far.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| I really dislike that so much of hacker culture is $$ focused
| now.
|
| 1. Being a hacker means walking the world being constantly
| dissatisfied by all of the inefficiency you see on a daily basis
| and wanting to fix it.
|
| 2. Being a hacker means feeling like most of the software world
| is fraudulent and you are going to build a solution that actually
| works.
|
| 3. Being a hacker means building something because it is fun or
| cool.
|
| Making money is a side effect of doing what you would do
| naturally because if you didn't you would lose self respect.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If no one will pay for the solution, the problem might not be
| that important.
| harshaxnim wrote:
| While this is true in broad strokes, I think money fails to
| capture non quantifiable quality of life improvements. Hacker
| culture being close to the users could solve them, but being
| driven by money would definitely hinder that development
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Totally agree. Things that you work on often start off as
| intellectual curiosity of "why does the world work this
| way?"
|
| Money often comes as a side effect but not the motivation
| that drives you to build in the first place.
| RevEng wrote:
| This is something that has come up many times for our
| company over the last 20 years. You can't sell the bean
| counters on quality of life. You need to show lower costs,
| higher quality results, or faster time to market - that's
| what gets you in the door.
|
| The thing that keeps you in the door and makes usage grow
| is the quality of life. Especially in the business world,
| most software is terrible. If people like using your
| software, they will tell others about it and they will be
| more accepting when things inevitably go wrong. The ease of
| use of our software and the immediate service we provide
| when customers ask for help are time and again the things
| they say keep them using our tools. With good support, even
| a frustrated bug report can turn into a happy experience.
| ekianjo wrote:
| volunteers do un paid work all the time that is actually
| important. not everything needs a price tag to matter.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| True, but important software doesn't (by and large) benefit
| very many people. Instead it makes a very few people
| extremely wealthy, and makes a somewhat larger number of
| comfortably upper middle class engineers' lives a little
| easier. Often those engineers are building products which
| actually harm most of their users.
|
| I labor in this industry because I enjoy the work and it
| pays better than anything else I could do, and I try to
| work for companies doing good things, but I have some
| misgivings about seeing unpaid open source work in the same
| light as volunteering. To be clear, as an engineer who
| benefits I'm grateful, but I'd rather developers were
| compensated fairly.
|
| EDIT: given the down votes, let me pose it as a question--
| Is software obviously a public good? Are we actually making
| things better on balance?
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| 100%
|
| Meaning that if you solve valuable problems you will
| [probably] make money. So spend all your time solving
| valuable problems not posting about $$
| RevEng wrote:
| "If you make it they will come" has been shown to be false
| time and time again. Just because your product is useful
| doesn't mean anybody knows about it or that they recognize
| the value it has. Lots of things we take for necessity
| today were once seen as a pointless waste of time. You
| still need to spend a significant amount of time marketing
| to get other people to want your product.
|
| But posting about all the money you are making is just
| silly unless you want a pat on the back. If you really are
| making bank and you want to get someone to buy you out,
| then start talking directly to the big players in your
| market. Then again, you won't have to, because they won't
| want to talk to you until you are a real threat to their
| business, at which point they'll be coming to you. Bragging
| to your early adopter community about your success just
| keeps them hyped for a bit.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Well, that pretty much rules out email, maps/navigation,
| messaging, and quite a bit more.
|
| Somehow, this suggests that perhaps your rubric needs
| amending.
| eirikbakke wrote:
| I'd amend it to: "If no one will pay for the solution, the
| problem might not be that important, or the solution is
| already commoditized."
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "If no one will pay for the solution, it may be because
| of a base factor of reality itself has collided a near
| universal facet of human nature," wherein the first might
| take the value of _although information might require the
| expenditure of resources to create, replication of the
| created information is often difficult to stymie and
| lacks even the approach to similar levels of consumed
| resources_ and the second value of _most humans are,
| unsurprisingly common as a trait of great objective value
| in any species with a history of billions of years
| evolving in environments wherein at least some resources
| are painfully limited, often unwilling to expend
| resources if they do not have to._
|
| The former is the nature of data itself, the latter
| having come into the existence the first time a creature
| with more than a handful of neurons was capable of making
| the choice to take what was right in front of it as
| opposed to venturing far afield for something similar.
| Both predate humans by millions of years at the least,
| and do not require the abstractions of market and money,
| or even the homo sapiens which first coined these
| concepts.
|
| While these two give rise to the freeloading scamp who
| attempts to read entire magazine at the news stand if
| they can get away with it, the printing press or coinage
| are not specifically required, and, if we were to ever
| meet other aliens with some kind of civilization, they
| would likely have situations parallel enough to end up in
| our eventual xenoanthropology textbooks. Assuming they're
| not so busy coming up with their own copies of _To Serve
| Man_ that we haven 't the time for us to write said
| texts.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| People happily pay for every one of those things.
|
| Fastmail, Garmin, Slack etc. WhatsApp had a paid model
| until Facebook bought it.
| blululu wrote:
| Paid services for all of these things existed before some
| global monopoly with insane profits launched competing
| versions for free.
| chongli wrote:
| Lots of people won't pay for journalism anymore. You'd have a
| hard time convincing me (or most other people on here) that
| journalism is no longer important.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Lots of people won't pay for something they can otherwise
| get for free, even if the free option is mediocre.
|
| This does not mean that journalism isn't valuable enough to
| some people. It just means that the market for journalism
| shrank.
| jeffhwang wrote:
| This is the short-sightedness of market fundamentalism.
| To take this to a ridiculous extreme, if I decide that
| taking care of my children is no longer ROI-positive,
| should I just decide this market has shrunk and the
| prudent thing to do is invest in new markets?
| chongli wrote:
| It's the diamonds vs water paradox of value. Diamonds are
| highly valued yet practically useless to most people.
| Water is extremely low-valued, yet essential to all life
| on earth.
|
| High-quality, investigative journalism is an essential
| institution for a functioning democracy, yet it's not
| valued by the people it is most important to: average
| citizens.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Water is extremely high-valued.
| hollerith wrote:
| You're in luck! I have water to sell you. Get out that
| checkbook!
| switchbak wrote:
| Or: you've built 67% of a solution, and it only really
| crosses into financial sense for most buyers once you pass
| 89%.
| szundi wrote:
| But you cannot measure these stuff, only argue about them
| with co-founders haha
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You are making the same mistake as youtubers chasing their
| numbers rather than having a personality and a point and an
| interest and something to say of their own.
|
| The ONLY reason I have any interest in someone's output is if
| it is something they themselves actually care about, what
| they actually think, etc. I want to know what they have to
| say. There is absolutely no value in them trying to say what
| they think I want to hear, worse, what they think most people
| want to hear.
|
| The second someone says "tell me what you want" I'm out. If I
| have to tell them that I'm interested in x, and then they go
| investigate x, what value is that to anyone? What insight can
| they bring to me about the topic of x? Why should I care what
| they have to say about x when 2 seconds ago they had no
| knowledge of it? No one's mere personality is so awesome that
| just having them do the same exact google search I can do and
| read the same exact intro material I can read and blatting
| out their initial reactions based on just that, results in
| something worthwhile.
|
| Whether your numbers (or your sales) are good or bad, it is a
| factor to consider, but it can't be the fundamental point of
| your existence. You have to have some legitimate point that
| stands on it's own, and only then, maybe, you can live off of
| it somehow.
|
| If you only care that you somehow get money, and don't care
| how, what value is that to me? Why would I as a customer give
| you money for anything? Even if you were trying to pander to
| exactly what I said I wanted, if I don't perceive that you
| are deeply knowldgeable and insightful and experienced in
| that topic, or at least maybe new but genuinely interested in
| working in that field or on that problem, but just trying to
| say yes to anything, no way in the world am I choosing you to
| supply that need.
| chongli wrote:
| _The ONLY reason I have any interest in someone 's output
| is if it is something they themselves actually care about,
| what they actually think, etc. I want to know what they
| have to say. There is absolutely no value in them trying to
| say what they think I want to hear, worse, what they think
| most people want to hear._
|
| MrBeast's leaked production document is pretty much exactly
| this: trying to anticipate what people will click on, what
| will go viral, and throwing all their weight behind it.
|
| Now it's fair to say that you, personally, place no value
| in viral content such as that. On the other hand, it's
| clearly not the case that this content is of no value to
| anyone. Very broad-based entertainment like this is about
| providing a small amount of value to a very large number of
| people.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think it's so clear. I watch Mr. Beast from time
| to time, and it seems to me that it's basically video
| junk food. Is it really more entertaining, or more
| thought provoking, or more valuable in any way than how I
| would have spent that 20 minutes otherwise?
| chongli wrote:
| I fully agree with you, it is video junk food. People
| spend a lot of money on junk food as well. They value it.
|
| Whether this is good or bad for society is a different
| question. Markets have never been able to solve that
| problem.
| Kinrany wrote:
| If someone will pay for the solution, the problem may still
| be utterly unimportant. So this tells us nothing.
| sureIy wrote:
| You're saying they're no true Scotsmen.
|
| They're entrepreneurs who don't really care what you call them.
| Of course people will try to make money, not everyone can
| afford to (or is willing to) maintain whole side projects for
| fun. Some people have side projects unrelated to their main
| line of work.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| You misunderstand me.
|
| If you solve valuable problems you will make money.
|
| If you have a side project then spend all your time solving
| valuable problems not posting about $$
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Making money doesn't necessarily imply value is being
| created. For example casinos create the illusion of value
| and generate a lot of money.
|
| Unfortunately, like a casino a lot of tech is an illusion,
| e.g. social media- you walk in and it's flashy and
| exciting, but you walk out having lost hours of your time
| and possibly a few brain cells.
| fwip wrote:
| Honestly, if you're money-focused, you're not a part of hacker
| culture.
|
| Edit: Deleted a claim that was probably stronger than I meant.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Sir, this is a hacker news not VC news.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's why I think parent's comment is kind of funny. This
| site _is_ VC news. If you 're looking for actual hacker
| culture, this ain't it. This website is mostly VC devs, not
| hackers.
| senko wrote:
| In the good ol times, being a hacker meant you love tinkering
| with tech and are good at it.
|
| Then media started using it to mean "computer criminal", which
| was annoying.
|
| Then "I don't code I solve problems" tech bros coopted it,
| which is worse. Looks like now you're a hacker if you identify
| a need and monetize it.
|
| I am fully cognizant I am writing this on a VC-backed founder
| oriented site called Hacker News, but I like to think there's
| still some good ol hacker spirit here, YC being named after an
| extremely nerdy thing and not "SaaS Launchpad" or somesuch.
|
| (yes yes old man yelling at cloud, get off my lawn, etc)
| zaptrem wrote:
| There's another very large subgroup you're missing: the hackers
| that build things (even for $0) because they're fun/cool, not
| because they solve a specific annoying problem/inefficiency.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Thank you for pointing that out. I updated my comment to
| include that group. Personally, my motivation comes from the
| part of me that feels compelled to fix things that are
| inefficient, but I love being a part of a community that
| builds useful/fun/cool things & each of us are driven by our
| own motivations.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| That's not hacking, that's called a hobby. Hacking is
| something that challenges social norms or might even get you
| in trouble.
| comprev wrote:
| "hacking" is the challenge of making something work in ways
| it was never intended - for example unlocking a car with
| wireless entry using a laptop and DIY electronics instead
| of the normal car key.
|
| Doing it to your own car is obviously very different from
| stealing someone else's, however it's not illegal to "hack"
| your own car. The theft part is what gets you in trouble.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Hacking, at it's very core, is the exploration and
| enjoyment of systems. Anything else beyond that raw
| definition is extra and varies.
| antonvs wrote:
| What you're describing are sometimes consequences of the
| hacker ethic, they're not core features.
| smokel wrote:
| See for example: https://justforfunnoreally.dev/
|
| Discussed on Hacker News here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33255920 and more
| recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41496725
| voiceblue wrote:
| > I really dislike that so much of hacker culture is $$ focused
| now.
|
| I don't think that's hacker culture. It's just the mainstream
| adoption of hacker culture, don't let it replace the real thing
| in your mind. When lots and lots of people started playing
| candy crush on phones, it wasn't gamer culture that changed,
| just the public perception of gaming.
|
| There are still people out there who conform to the description
| you laid out. Are there lots and lots of them? No. It does seem
| to be a growing segment though.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that, it's awesome to see so many of us
| still around!
|
| (Not trying to gatekeep--anyone can be a hacker, no matter
| when they start. Just sharing some fun memories--I still
| remember upgrading from a 386 to a 486, then to a Pentium
| 133. Or the LAN parties. Or when IRC splits let you take over
| a popular channel for a while! Fun times! The new tools being
| built today, especially around AI, are just as exciting and
| remind me of the early days of the internet. There's so much
| more to create!)
| joshdavham wrote:
| Agreed. Hackers build software because it's fun, not because it
| will make them money.
| jamil7 wrote:
| There's a general feeling of pressure for a lot of people to
| monetise hobbies.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Exactly, it's the opportunity cost.
|
| When I was a young adult and especially a teenager, I spent a
| lot of time making things out of pure desire to because I
| didn't have to think too much about my financial situation
| (present and future). That unfortunately gave way with age,
| and now ~15 years later whenever I engage with these
| activities there's a voice in the back of my head nagging,
| asking how doing those things instead of something that could
| potentially bring a financial return might negatively impact
| ability to achieve short term goals, tide over periods of
| economic uncertainty, have enough money for retirement, etc.
|
| It's probably not the right way to think since personal
| projects that might seem unprofitable on their face can bring
| benefits in unexpected ways, but it's a problem nonetheless.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > Would you still build that app, because it solves an annoying
| real world problem even if you got paid $0?
|
| Assuming you're talking about building an app _for other
| people_ , I personally would not, no. The market is sending a
| clear signal that it values the app at zero dollars. In other
| words, they don't want it.
|
| > If not then the problem you are solving is probably not
| important and a waste of your time anyway.
|
| This is exactly the question that charging money answers: Do
| people just say they want your app or are they willing to "put
| their money where their mouth is" and actually buy it?
|
| (Also note that not all things are paid for with money. Some
| are paid for with time or attention, so adjust for that if
| necessary.)
| patcon wrote:
| By that logic, isn't building a family something one should
| never do? There is no market to sell your family, so that
| must be a clear signal that your attention and energy should
| go elsewhere...?
|
| I'm sure this analogy is a bit absurd (and I'd love to see it
| torn apart), but I hope it opens readers to the premise that
| some highly desirable and important emotional, intellectual
| and social objects should exist even when there is no market
| for some of their forms
| jt2190 wrote:
| I don't build my family for other people either.
|
| Edit: I can't tell if you're willfully misreading what I
| wrote or just trying to be cute. At no point did I assert
| that _nothing_ should be created without a market. But if
| you're creating something for other people then those other
| people are, by definition, your market, and you should pay
| close attention to signs that they actually want what
| you've created (like a willingness to trade dollars or time
| or attention).
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| I think it's less about money and more about the endless access
| to metrics and analytics which will impact how you feel about
| your project. A forum of maybe a few dozen people you somewhat
| know loving something 20 years ago would have sufficed but now
| it all tends towards vague bigger numbers of people you have
| minimal knowledge of to feel at all good about the effort put
| in. In lieu of 10,000 likes, which might ultimately feel hollow
| anyway, making a couple hundred dollars will probably suffice.
|
| I made a super niche modding tool a few weeks ago; it's got one
| star on GitHub but the two nerds that have actually used it are
| delighted with it and I'm very happy about that. The notion
| another few in the future will find it is oddly nice to think
| about
| ppqqrr wrote:
| It's an ideal, and like any ideal we manage to capture in a
| six-letter word, 99% will get it completely backwards. For
| example, everyone knows and agrees with the value of the phrase
| "think outside the box," but only a minority ever recognizes
| "the box" they should be thinking outside of, and even fewer
| bother to fully apply the wisdom by making a habit out of
| finding the box that's currently holding them at any given
| moment.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| What an awful way to live, with the sense that everyone else is
| a fraud and you're the only one that's real. It sounds terribly
| lonely, and equally unattractive. Who would want to work with,
| or be around someone, with such a terrible opinion of others?
| svnt wrote:
| It's weird to say but the whole startup culture has shifted,
| from founder to hacker and everywhere in between. It's a victim
| of its own success because no one is writing feature pieces in
| media on quants or finance bros with the same gusto as they did
| in the 2010s for tech founders.
|
| So the attention combined with the desire to escape the grind
| which is only offered in combination by tech founder, has
| nearly fully been consumed in the broader machine of
| capitalism.
|
| When we ran out of stored resources to consume, we
| unsustainably consumed our own attention, and then when that
| was gone, we turned our attention to the money machine that
| made it possible, and started eating that.
| winwang wrote:
| I definitely resonate with #1 and #3, but I got bills to pay.
| And some of the things I want to see in the world, well, they
| would require a lot of money.
| null0pointer wrote:
| This resonates with me. Maybe I'm just nostalgic because I
| started my career during the hacking scene of the early 2010's,
| but it really feels like we've lost our way as an industry
| since then.
| whiterknight wrote:
| When it comes to marketing I think we can take a page from the
| Apple playbook. Never show anything incomplete. Critics and the
| general public don't understand the artistic process and will
| only become uneasy. nobody cares how you did it. Just show
| results.
| zkirill wrote:
| As far as I know the first Apple computer was not really a
| computer but a box of parts that the customer had to assemble
| themselves. The early days of Apple is probably the best
| example of "building in public" because so much of it was
| actually just selling the dream. In any case, the opposite is
| infinitely worse. Too many people wasted away for years
| "building in private". If and when they did finally release it
| was to the sound of crickets. Hacking for pleasure is one
| thing. If you're trying to build a business then you must be
| always be selling and marketing.
| whiterknight wrote:
| Yeah and Apple didn't make any money until after that phase.
|
| > If you're trying to build a business then you must be
| always be selling and marketing.
|
| Yes. I am only giving marketing advice. Sales is
| unfortunately embedded in so many other areas of life besides
| commerce.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| At a more microscopic level, the same goes for git commits.
| Complete, sensible ideas are much easier to interact with and
| understand than someone's chaotic half thought through work-in-
| progress. There's value to this approach at all scales of
| magnification--completeness and polish aids digestibility and
| helps {colleagues, users, buyers, prospects} understand the
| value proposition.
| pembrook wrote:
| Anecdotal, but it seems like all the people who "build in public"
| end up trapped by their chosen distribution strategy.
|
| What I mean by this is, if you're building in public there's a
| 99% chance you're going to end up building products for other
| indiehackers who are interested in following people who build in
| public.
|
| This means you're probably going to end up building yet another
| micro-Saas dev tool (Saas boilerplate, incident monitoring, etc)
| or growth hacking tool (for social media, SEO, cold email, AI
| content, etc).
|
| And you'll probably get modest success fast, since indiehackers
| like tools that help them indiehack and if they follow you on
| social media to hear stories of how they can get rich quick,
| they'll definitely buy a product from you promising to help them
| do that.
|
| However, I think you'll struggle to ever "cross the chasm" so to
| speak into building a company that's bigger than whatever online
| personality you build (no mass markets or low churn businesses
| without pyramid scheme dynamics).
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| This. I like listening to technical solo founders talk about
| they built. Its the less technical marketing guys building in
| public their AI "powered" crud apps or micro SaaS like you
| describe that really bother me. They remind me a lot of scammy
| people on Instagram talking about drop shipping or whatever the
| get rich quick scheme of the week is.
| winwang wrote:
| Currently a technical solo founder. Got any video recs?
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| The SaaS Podcast by Omer Khan has some solid technical
| interviews including lots on growth and matketing with solo
| devs and small teams who are actually serious and not just
| grifting and wrapping apis with no-code solutions.
|
| The World Of DaaS by Auren Hoffman has some decent
| episodes. These tend to be interviews with more established
| entrepreneurs but lots of bootstrapping/ early growth
| stories from devs/teams when they were much smaller.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| They are those people, just a bit more technical.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > What I mean by this is, if you're building in public there's
| a 99% chance you're going to end up building products for other
| indiehackers who are interested in following people who build
| in public.
|
| Sounds a bit like a variation on Conway's Law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There must be some named law that states that the set of
| people you listen determine most of your thoughts. But it's
| something way wider in scope than Conway's Law.
|
| There are some proverbs, because it's a very old observation.
| But there must be named laws too, because it's a very common
| observation.
| citboin wrote:
| The Bandwagon effect, maybe?
| lightandlight wrote:
| > > What I mean by this is, if you're building in public
| there's a 99% chance you're going to end up building
| products for other indiehackers who are interested in
| following people who build in public.
|
| > There must be some named law that states that the set of
| people you listen determine most of your thoughts. But it's
| something way wider in scope than Conway's Law.
|
| A related term is "audience capture". When you do things
| based on the approval of your followers, you can end up
| catering to some weird niches.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Product Hunt Law?
| danenania wrote:
| I see your point, but I would disagree with you somewhat.
|
| Every new startup needs to navigate the transition from early
| adopters to bigger names and/or more mainstream users who give
| you credibility and higher revenue potential. But it's almost
| _always_ done as a stepping stone approach. You need to get the
| early adopters first or else none of the rest matters.
|
| Doing this is _not easy_ so any conceivable advantage is worth
| considering. Of course targeting build in public and
| indiehackers are not the only possible strategies for getting
| early users, but if it's working for you, don't underestimate
| how valuable that is.
|
| Of course I do agree about going into it with both eyes open
| and knowing that if you're successful enough, you will likely
| have to evolve somehow toward another customer segment. But
| again, this is almost always the case no matter what your early
| adopter channels are.
| pembrook wrote:
| Definitely agree that startups have to find a foothold
| _somewhere,_ and basically land and expand from there.
|
| If we take B2B products for example, it's super common to
| niche down into a specific industry and then expand out to
| adjacent ones, and so on.
|
| But the build-in-public industry/niche is unique in that
| those customers aren't "real" businesses with "real"
| problems. Most of the followers are wantreprenuers with
| imagined problems.
|
| So the risk is, instead of building a solid foundation to
| expand from, you might just be building the wrong thing
| altogether and doing it on quicksand (those pyramid scheme
| dynamics I was talking about).
| CM30 wrote:
| This is an issue with a lot of online creator communities and
| people using them for marketing too. Way too many would be
| authors, artists, game developers, YouTubers, musicians, etc
| end up marketing their work in communities for their choice of
| art/project rather than in places their actual audience visits.
|
| Unfortunately as you point out, while that can work to a
| limited degree, it will usually cap off pretty quickly. Gotta
| market to customers, not other creators.
| duped wrote:
| I've seen the other side of this, which is zero organic growth
| and enormous strain on founders to become salespeople and
| customer support for customers that perpetually keep your
| software in a trial period. Depending on where you want to
| allocate your resources that may or may not make sense compared
| to building in public.
|
| That said, the bigger risk is building products for
| hobbyists/students/tourists because it won't have the ability
| to "cross the chasm" as you put it. At least with the hacker
| scene you have a few legit people to drive development forward.
|
| Selling stuff and growing is hard.
| baxtr wrote:
| What your basically saying is:
|
| If you build a product for indiehackers, you'll never be able
| to sell it beyond that initial target market.
|
| I feel like that's a bit like saying a Social Media platform
| built for college students won't never go mainstream.
|
| So I'm wondering: is there any product that started as
| indiehacker product and eventually ended up becoming a mass
| market product?
| a13n wrote:
| I think the right strategy is to use building in public to get
| a bunch of initial users and traction, then iterate on your
| product to the point where other channels like SEO/PPC are
| going to be profitable.
| al_borland wrote:
| To me, it always seemed like the "build in public" folks were
| doing it more for themselves. A way to not feel so alone on the
| journey, while ultimately working alone. If it helped with
| marketing and launch, that would be a bonus.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Attention seeking activity... I guess it's one form of
| marketing, but if the attention is on the builder, probably not
| zaptrem wrote:
| Building something big alone is really tough and
| demoralizing. If this is a way they can mitigate that until
| they can find others to join them, more power to them.
| However, I've also heard of the dangers of oversharing early
| and losing the incentive to finish the project because you
| already got the attention dopamine hit.
| RevEng wrote:
| Plenty of stupidly successful and wealthy people have risen
| up by getting people to pay attention to them. Jobs, Bankman-
| Freid, Musk, and so many others found their success largely
| on cultivating their public image moreso than on their
| products.
| al_borland wrote:
| There does need to be a good product to back them up for
| long term success. That's where Bankman-Freid failed. Jobs
| was successful, and the products/company he created have
| outlived him and his image.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > Let's admit it, the main purpose of build in public is to
| attract attention and build a community
|
| It's more like open sourcing your code. On one hand: yes, it's
| good marketing. On the other hand: you're creating positive
| externality, so random people show up, thank you for your
| contribution, and help you, monetarily, or by giving you valuable
| leads & feedback.
|
| it's the same benefit of going to a conference & networking, just
| doing it continually. It's still useful even if everyone is doing
| it, because _when_ someone stumbles on your work, they have an
| entry point /signal on whether there's mutual benefit in
| collaborating.
| charlie0 wrote:
| If I have to think on first principles, the reason why people are
| building things in public is because that's just a form of
| marketing and self-promotion. We're way past tech being the hard
| part of launching a product. The harder part is building the
| audience and trying to stand out. Building in public is probably
| the easiest way to build buzz, gain an audience, and name
| recognition.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| The elephant behind the elephant in our room is an inability to
| be honest and upfront about this kind of stuff and instead we
| have to dance around it. This essentially means we can't have a
| decent discussion on any topic that carries actual risk and
| instead we focus on low-risk banalities.
|
| Also I should add there are a lot of young posters who are, and
| I won't sugarcoat it, hopelessly naive at times - certainly
| saying shit I'd never think about saying when I was their age,
| so with that we are on a treadmill of constantly seeing,
| mocking, relearning etc past mistakes.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Say more.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I don't think there was ever a time when you could succeed in
| the marketplace on the merits of your tech. Once the tech
| reaches the relatively low bar of "good enough", the rest is
| sales and marketing. In the most lucrative enterprise market,
| the "good enough" bar is even lower than in the much less
| lucrative consumer market because the people who will actually
| have to use your tech aren't the ones buying it. Technical
| quality likely matters the most to "customers" who don't pay
| anything such as users of popular open source projects.
|
| If you want to make money from a good product then becoming a
| social media influencer who talks about your product is the
| most straightforward way to advertise without having to pay for
| ads.
| goosejuice wrote:
| Hard part of launching _most_ products. But I agree, I'm not
| sure content marketing, regardless of topic, can have an actual
| downside in the majority of circumstances. Maybe just the
| opportunity cost.
|
| Marketing a product seems easier than ever with social media,
| however the ocean is much larger.
|
| Moreover the author could have easily written this post as
| "it's time to rethink 'thoughtleader blogging' and it would fit
| just as well. Most people don't write this stuff for their own
| pleasure, they write it for eyeballs. They write it for their
| readers. In that sense I suspect building in public works as
| well as blog posts like this for gaining a following. There's
| no one fits all answer to this.
| paxys wrote:
| This is just an extension of the LinkedIn/YouTube/X
| "thoughtfluencer" epidemic. If the person sharing has a
| successful track record in the field and is genuine about
| sharing/helping - great! 99% of them are, however, only
| interested in building clout and expanding their personal brand.
| axegon_ wrote:
| The way I see it, those are just a spin on "I did X for Y months
| and here's what I learned" articles. Clickbait at best but mostly
| those are just articles that fill void with words. Whenever I
| stumble upon those, I am never really buy into them. I am a huge
| believer in the idea of the American dream but in a functioning
| economy, this can only work a handful of times. Over the years
| I've attempted creating a startup and bootstrap it on my own or
| with a small team of friends and the one thing I've learned from
| those attempts(see what I did there...) is that it's practically
| impossible, even if you have the right idea and you get the
| timing right. Arguably I didn't get the timing right on a few
| occasions and I was way too early for the party. Had I waited for
| a few years, those might have picked up but the truth is, I
| sincerely doubt it. At this point, whenever I land on one of
| those indie gigs, I instinctively roll my eyes and click away.
| joshdavham wrote:
| I'm fully in support of people who decide to 'build in public',
| but personally, I'm not a fan. While building in public can be a
| good marketing channel, it can also a pretty massive distraction,
| especially when you're still so small. I think people still
| underestimate the distraction and timesink that these social
| media platforms cause and would often be better off heads-down
| improving their product and talking directly with their users.
| nicbou wrote:
| I build in public, but I _never_ share numbers. I find that it
| attracts the wrong sort of people, and a particularly boring kind
| of conversation about money and growth and the icky business-y
| bits.
|
| I do work with the garage door open though. I share screenshots,
| ask for feedback, and show off the little details I spent a lot
| of time on. It's basically a DVD commentary for the stuff I am
| about to release
|
| _This_ attracts the right kind of people, and sparks the right
| kinds of conversations. I am basically involving fellow builders
| in my design process, and hyping what I am working on to my
| audience and industry peers. It is a good way to make friends.
| breck wrote:
| I was very skeptical when I saw this headline, but you got me to
| click! So, good clickbait?
|
| I love the discussion. I think you may just have self-biased your
| Twitter feed, and so to you it looks like the world is building
| in public, but to 99% of the population it's very rare.
|
| Loved the discussion though, and your portfolio and blog are
| great.
|
| Here's my user test:
| https://news.pub/?try=https://www.youtube.com/embed/10SIY3jE...
| thekevan wrote:
| >it seems people are more willing to post about their
| achievements, rather than ideas and plans about their products.
|
| Other people can steal your plans and ideas, they can't steal
| your revenue.
|
| Also, rather than declaring that other people should rethink what
| they are doing, maybe just reconsider your choice to be involved
| in it.
|
| Full "build in public" isn't for me, if it matters.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| I think as a general rule, any shiny new market strategy will
| perform worse in year 10 than it will in year 1. Law of
| diminished returns and all. And that's before factoring in any
| platform enshittification.
| tchock23 wrote:
| I get doing it to feel less alone in the journey, but unless your
| target customer is other indie hackers it just invites
| unnecessary competition.
|
| I get that 'it's not about the idea - the execution is what
| matters,' but why make an already difficult journey that much
| harder?
| TrevorFSmith wrote:
| The term is "build in public" not "talk about money in public".
| If you enjoy chatting about the esoteric details of building a
| useful thing then great. If you're mostly trying to attract
| customers and you don't enjoy it, then don't do it.
| pipes wrote:
| Every time I see "building in public" I cringe. Not sure why.
|
| Anyway I have an app idea for a very small annoyance in my daily
| life. Listening to Pieter Levels inspired me to at least try and
| ship it. But there's no way I'm comfortable with all the other
| indy hacker shite I'd need to do to, like build a twitter profile
| etc. My only hope is probably showing it on a sub Reddit and
| seeing if anyone finds it useful.
|
| Anyway, as I work as a developer, even if it fails, it doesn't
| matter. I'll learn a lot by doing it.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| That it all still depends on your twitter persona to build
| audience, with twitter being a maga show (I only follow devs,
| still get tons of content I do not want). I find it a very
| toxic place but seems it's needed if you want to get anywhere
| sales wise.
| a13n wrote:
| Counterargument: I started Canny and we were a "build in public"
| startup early on. Building in public was an invaluable marketing
| channel in the early days.
|
| When you are just launching your product, it's really difficult
| to get those first users and any awareness at all.
|
| If your target audience includes other people in tech, then
| building in public can be great marketing channel.
|
| Posting about your ideas or your product just isn't that
| interesting. Posting how much money you're making is very
| interesting to other people who might want to follow your path.
|
| Like all successful marketing channels, this channel is a lot
| more saturated these days than when we started (~2017), so it
| might not work as well anymore.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Indie hacking has gone mainstream with the rise of inflation,
| which makes a lot of the content incredibly banal and formulaic.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| No, it doesn't work. If you actually are solving a problem, then
| you can do some sort of like beta testing publicly, just how
| games do play testing, which can be public or not. But other than
| that, building it in public makes no sense. You might give
| updates every now and then about what you're building, but that's
| about it.
| RevEng wrote:
| Another problem is that, as an indie, you probably aren't an
| experienced marketing person. I've been the one managing "build
| in the open" with a founder on a popular Kickstarter project and
| it was awful. If we posted a lot, people complained we weren't
| spending our time on building the thing. If we slowed down the
| communications to focus on the project, people said we weren't
| being transparent or we had taken off with the money. Half of the
| comments on our posts were from people angry because we hadn't
| said anything about a super niche feature that only they wanted,
| or because it didn't do something that even a 100x more expensive
| product could do.
|
| Entire communities started up around our product. They
| communicated publicly with us constantly. Their favorite past
| times were thinking up wild new features that we absolutely must
| have and trying to devine what was happening internally by over
| analyzing everything we said. Many of the community members used
| the size of their community to try to bully us into doing what
| they wanted. I personally had several emails telling me I was an
| idiot and a fraud. We were a victim of our own success.
|
| It's the same fate that every open source developer experiences.
| As soon as you open yourself up to the world, everybody wants
| something from you and they want it now. If you already have a
| mature product with a healthy sales funnel and a clear vision,
| you can market what you have as you wish. If you're in the middle
| of creating something and you talk about it with others, they
| will all want a say in what you create and they will be upset if
| you don't act on their suggestions.
|
| Now that I'm in a large company but working on a new and exciting
| project, we have hit the same problem internally - everybody who
| hears about it wants us to build it to suit them and they are
| disappointed when we instead try to build something that works
| for everyone. Any other product we made we never talked about
| into it was largely built and ready to start selling and we never
| had that kind of bullying behavior.
|
| Something about being on the early phases of development makes
| people think you want their suggestions and they get rather upset
| when you don't build what they have in mind. That's why it's
| better to keep to yourself while you get the foundations in
| place, then carefully choose who you discuss it with until it's
| ready for the world to start buying it.
| hakanderyal wrote:
| Building in public is not a single, defined activity. Nor people
| doing it has the same motivation for it.
|
| Some share numbers, some don't. Some share everything, some goes
| with outlines. Some... you get the idea.
|
| I do it because it's boring to build alone, month after month,
| year after year. I've joined the community 2 years ago and
| couldn't be happier.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I tried it, but it's not very effective. The central problem is
| the following: The people who are building, aren't interested in
| your posts on Twitter. They're busy building. For the most part
| in those groups, I saw people's earnest attempts at getting
| attention but every moment you spend on self-promotion is a
| moment you're not adding features.
|
| The people who do end up getting a lot of attention, they're
| better at marketing, but not necessarily building. This is how
| you end up with people creating pretty-looking tools and products
| that aren't particularly innovative but make for nice
| screenshots.
| XCSme wrote:
| I do build in public: https://x.com/XCSme
|
| I keep sharing my thoughts and what I'm working on. Those posts
| barely get any impressions, but I don't want to post stuff just
| to please the algorithm.
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