[HN Gopher] Does "building in public" work?
___________________________________________________________________
Does "building in public" work?
Author : laike9m
Score : 279 points
Date : 2024-09-22 17:30 UTC (1 days 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.
| bruce511 wrote:
| In broad strokes, yes you are right in some cases.
|
| But in most cases you don't see quality of life
| improvements unless you also get users.
|
| In other words building it is not enough. Lives need to use
| it to be improved.
|
| Monetizing an app forces you to concentrate on articulating
| that value. It frees up resources (ie money) to spend on
| spreading the word. It offers you feedback on whether this
| is a meaningful use of your time or not.
|
| Dont get me wrong. An app can add value to a single person.
| You can give it away for free. There's nothing wrong with
| that.
| 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 $$
| RevEng wrote:
| "If you make it they will come" has been shown to be false
| time and time again. Just because your product is useful
| doesn't mean anybody knows about it or that they recognize
| the value it has. Lots of things we take for necessity
| today were once seen as a pointless waste of time. You
| still need to spend a significant amount of time marketing
| to get other people to want your product.
|
| But posting about all the money you are making is just
| silly unless you want a pat on the back. If you really are
| making bank and you want to get someone to buy you out,
| then start talking directly to the big players in your
| market. Then again, you won't have to, because they won't
| want to talk to you until you are a real threat to their
| business, at which point they'll be coming to you. Bragging
| to your early adopter community about your success just
| keeps them hyped for a bit.
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> So spend all your time solving valuable problems
|
| Just make sure that you understand the the valuable
| problems are marketing and sales, not code.
|
| Writing code is not hard. (Even an AI can do that.)
| Building a product is harder, but that's the easy part.
|
| The harder part is reaching people who would benefit from
| consuming your value. Facebook and Google offer value to
| you in this space, and because this space is hard they make
| the big bucks.
|
| Once you've reached the market convincing them to part with
| money is the next hard problem.
|
| So yes, by all means solve a problem. Build the app, write
| the code. That is necessary but not sufficient.
|
| >> not posting about $$
|
| Honestly it doesn't really matter what you're posting
| about. Posting is marketing. Building an audience. It's one
| way, and yes feel free to do what works for you. Try and be
| different, don't just follow the herd.
|
| Coding is easy. Marketing is hard.
| 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!
| yMEyUyNE1 wrote:
| How about a bullet? :)
|
| https://theworld.org/stories/2024/08/27/a-rise-in-water-
| rela...
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Water is given or taken. It does not transact.
| hollerith wrote:
| Let me guess: so say the natives of Arrakis?
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but that's not relevant to hacking. Hackers often hack
| for the sake of it, not because doing so will solve an
| important problem.
| 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.
| danenania wrote:
| I think it's actually a pretty healthy mix. That's what
| makes HN so cool imo.
| 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)
| danenania wrote:
| I think building a business can encompass the hacker spirit
| as well if it's approached in that way. Financial
| sustainability is a necessary component to solving problems
| on a large scale in a durable way. Why should a hacker draw
| the line at purely technical challenges?
| 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.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| > it's not illegal to "hack" your own car
|
| I'm certain some car company will sue you if they get to
| know that you did.
| senko wrote:
| Maybe it's not really _your_ car, then. (Same with some
| mobile phones, tractors, etc.)
| 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.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Hacking seems to have taken on so many different meanings.
|
| I've always known hacking as a term specifically related to
| bypassing security in digital systems. Think Matthew
| Broderick gaining access to government networks via a phone
| line. This was hacking that would always get you in trouble
| if caught.
|
| I'm not quite sure when "hacking" was repurposed as a term
| for using something in a way it wasn't intended ("life
| hacks" or "kitchen hacks", etc).
|
| Now hacking is about challenging social norms? I'm very
| lost at this point, in an "old man shakes fist at clouds"
| kind of way.
| 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!)
| llm_trw wrote:
| >Not trying to gatekeep
|
| You really should. Without gates everything of value is
| stolen and we're left with nothing but grifters.
| 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.
| qb1 wrote:
| I am in this boat with you. How do we get out?
| jwells89 wrote:
| Great question. The feeling clearly isn't based in logic;
| somehow watching a TV show or playing a game (neither of
| which is financially productive) instead of working on
| "just for fun" side projects doesn't elicit the same
| mental response unless I really couch potato out and do
| those things for hours on end. That makes it a bit more
| difficult to work with.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Probably because of the feeling that you only have so
| much energy for each bucket. Watching TV isn't taking
| energy from the dev bucket, but working on a fun but
| personal project does take energy from the dev bucket.
|
| Of course, this isn't how it actually seems to work -
| there is some truth to it for most people, but if you
| "overdraw" from one bucket and "neglect" another bucket,
| they will change sizes.
| komali2 wrote:
| In order to experience the upper tiers of relaxation and
| life enjoyment capitalism offers (pure free time with no
| external pressures to sell your labor), you have to be
| successful by capitalistic metrics. You aren't going to
| be a billionaire so power under capitalism isn't
| available to you, so instead you'll need to sell your
| labor until you have enough money to exploit and sell
| someone else's labor at little cost to you. If the word
| "exploit" makes you feel icky, think of it more
| positively, like the way one might exploit a gold mine:
| by mining it.
|
| At 4 million in the bank (and various assets) you should
| be good to "escape," if by escape you mean "not need to
| sell your labor to live" anymore. 4 million gives you
| more than enough residuals to live off until death. Less
| if some of that is in property so you don't have to pay
| rent. Less if you retire to southeast Asia and engage in
| geographic arbitrage. You spent years paying for carrier
| groups and precision missiles, why not reap the rewards?
|
| So far as I can judge, this is the only way the system
| permits escape.
|
| If you're interested in permitless escape, one of my
| favorite introductions to the subject is "Walkaway" by
| Cory Doctorow, a wonderful amalgamation of hacker
| culture, anarchism, sustainability, anti capitalism, and
| communism. Even if you think some of those are dirty
| words, if you're at all interested in EV tech, 3d
| printing, batteries, solar, zero trust ID, or
| transhumanism, you'll probably enjoy that book. He
| basically just answers every "but what if..." you could
| think of for a group of hackers living in an abandoned
| rust belt town.
|
| Personally I'm right now very interested in food forests
| and tech projects researching local supply chain
| production of equipment, such as
| https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ the global
| village construction set and
| https://simplifier.neocities.org whoever this person is
| that's been documenting their efforts building things
| like solar panels and circuit boards in their garage from
| raw materials for nearly the last decade.
| 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).
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| The issue is that you responded to stuff around reasons
| for being a hacker with a requirement that isn't a
| requirement for hacking.
|
| Hacking doesn't require something to be built for other
| people.
| jt2190 wrote:
| Ah, I see that the post I responded to (and quoted) has
| been completely rewritten.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > The market is sending a clear signal that it values the app
| at zero dollars
|
| Oh but those are _very different things_
|
| An app that people would pay $0 is still more valuable (and
| might I say, a lot more valuable) than an app that people
| wouldn't install for free
| 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.
| namanyayg wrote:
| this is a great comment, you took the words out of my mouth and
| described what I think is wrong with Twitter culture
| laike9m wrote:
| +1, well said
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Making money is a side effect of doing what you would do
| naturally because if you didn't you would lose self respect.
|
| Most hackers some 20 years ago weren't worried about money, so
| they could naturally explore their curiosities in their free
| time. Hustle culture in general seems to rise and fall
| inversely to the economic situtation, so I'm not too surprised
| that we're shifting to $$ over curiosity at the moment.
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That's true. But despite being the same legal entity, there
| is very little in common between 70s Apple and the Apple of
| today. We shouldn't really expect consistent behavior.
| 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.
| p0nce wrote:
| Yes I feel like this "public" work only for non-veblen goods,
| else it just devaluates the whole creation process.
| 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.
| winwang wrote:
| Thanks!
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| They are those people, just a bit more technical.
| colecut wrote:
| That seems a bit harsh. They aren't forcing anyone to watch
| or scamming anyone by building in public.
| 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.
| lelandfe wrote:
| You are what you eat
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Product Hunt Law?
| MavisBacon wrote:
| oh boy, spot on
| cromulent wrote:
| Demagoguery.
| 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.
| wheatgreaser wrote:
| is there like a right way to do it?
| 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?
| meiraleal wrote:
| Font awesome? They made a huge crowdfunding for a new Web
| Awesome project with much bigger scope
| laike9m wrote:
| Good question. I'm curious as well. From what I can tell,
| more and more indiehackers seem to be focusing on building
| tools for other indiehackers...
| 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.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| It's the same problem with indie game development. Lots of
| people get into gamedev and when they have a semblance of a
| game they start to think "how am I going to get players to try
| it?" Most of the venues for game developers are just full of
| other game developers.
|
| The biggest problem is when the game leaves the cradle of a
| gamedev community that is nice to beginners and is thrown into
| the wilderness of actual gamers that don't know how much effort
| it takes to make a game and don't really care. They won't mince
| words.
|
| I suppose it's just a common class of error to not think
| beforehand what your end game strategy is going to be? Step 1:
| make thing. Step 2: ?. Step 3: profit.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >However, I think you'll struggle to ever "cross the chasm" so
| to speak
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
|
| Book by Geoffrey Moore.
|
| quoted a lot by startups for a couple of decades plus.
|
| had read it some years ago. quite interesting ...
| mvkel wrote:
| Well said.
|
| I've seen so many indie hacker types who are allergic to
| talking to (would-be) customers, seeking validation exclusively
| from other indie hackers, who would never be customers.
|
| Saw a tweet the other day of someone saying "to find a good
| business idea, first tweet about it and see if it gets love."
|
| 1) what
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| This is the result of indie hackers believing that social
| media success is an integral part of building something.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Every time I dip my toes into indiehacker communities it's this
| all the way down: Indie hackers building personal brands to
| sell products to other indie hackers via their Twitter or
| TikTok.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It's such a joke. Its nearly impossible to find decent places
| to talk about it online because of this.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Yes, the "public" they're building in isn't a very interesting
| one and already crowded by podcasts, blogs, tutorial sites,
| etc.
|
| If instead you're building, e.g., construction software, then
| it makes sense to be public to the construction space and build
| excitement there. But everyone's "public" is where developers
| congregate, leading to building just for that crowd instead.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| It's interesting how the urge is always to build something
| "bigger". When you run the numbers on a revenue per employee
| basis, the indiehackers are the biggest kids on the block.
|
| I'd prefer a legion of small businesses that generate great
| wealth for the people around them, than a single, venture
| funded, loss making, mega-corp concentrated in SF.
|
| I await your downvotes :)
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's one of the things I still find impressive about
| Steve Jobs and his legacy. While Apple isn't the same
| company as it was when Jobs was alive, it's still a
| wildly-successful, innovative company. They still do
| "unheard-of" things, like designing and building their
| own SoCs and taking a stab into product categories like
| Vision Pro (regardless of whether or not it ends up being
| successful).
|
| I think a lot of people (myself included, to some extent)
| thought Apple would lose its way (again) after Jobs died.
| It's a testament to the company he (re-)built and the
| culture and mindset he curated that it's still doing
| well.
|
| Bankman-Fried, meanwhile, built a whole lot of nothing,
| and had no integrity.
| crabmusket wrote:
| This is my read too. People refer to it as a "community".
| There's an emotional attachment to being an "indie hacker" that
| goes beyond "this is a marketing strategy". Of course, as the
| existence of the community becomes more valuable as a marketing
| channel, that may shift, and maybe the OP is noticing that it
| already has shifted?
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| that's also just how you make friends. An increasingly hard
| aspect in western society these days as third places decrease.
| Yeah, you need to do something to attract attention, especially
| in a digital domain where all you are are a handle and maybe an
| avatar. building a community means more of a like-minded pool
| to potentially become friends with.
|
| I'd kill for some local meetup spot to have already done all
| this for me, but this is the next best approach.
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think there are a lot of honest people out there that just
| wanna make and share cool stuff. I also think the well was
| poisoned by grifters who wanted either clout of a quick buck.
| That seems to be a story that encompases the last 30 years of
| the tech industry as we know it.
|
| >there are a lot of young posters who are, and I won't
| sugarcoat it, hopelessly naive at times
|
| I don't mind those people. No one really wants to mentor
| these days, but people LOVE to correct. I'd treat that
| incoming flaming as an opportunity to learn from people who'd
| never speak up otherwise (after inevitably discarding 80% of
| replies that are simply non-constructive insults).
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Your post reminded me of that "ten thousand" xkcd about how
| mathematically not "everyone knows" something that feels like
| everybody should know. Not even close.
|
| You said "treadmill of mistakes"... well there are a lot of
| people and eventually they all become one of the "lucky ten
| thousand". I wonder if your frustration is watching yet
| another batch of 10,000 learn those "same mistakes".
|
| I dunno, it feels like a less cynical interpretation to me.
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If success is financial then no. But you could build a
| reputation from some brilliant and easy to use/integrate
| tech. Which is in the hacker's spirit and the backbone of so
| many "successful" software.
|
| It also set forth a very straightforward "success" path: make
| good software that the community praises and tech companies
| (who probably also use your code) will climb over each other
| to get you on their team. But I suppose those days are slowly
| ending as well now that many problems (for all but the
| biggest tech companies) are being solved. No need for a
| million dollar mastermind when a 100k mid-level can do the
| job.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I've got reasonable financial success in my software product
| mainly from the merits of the tech. Pretty much all the
| marketing I ever did was spamming a small mailing list once,
| making an anonymous website that subtly mentioned my product,
| got good Google ranking, and got referenced by other people,
| and eventually making a Wikipedia page which I'm not sure
| does any good. I got good ranking in Google early on without
| any particular effort, probably because there just aren't
| many competitors.
|
| Other people have done a lot to help at their own initiative
| though. Resellers approach me and market it themselves,
| customers recommend it on forums, researchers mention it in
| their published papers, and one customer even wrote a chapter
| of a book about it - which was key to being eligible for a
| Wikipedia page.
|
| I'm lucky though because it belongs to a slow moving, well-
| defined class of products that people in my target industry
| already understand so when they go looking for a cheaper
| alternative to the super-priced big names, they find mine.
| I'm not inventing a new market.
|
| It's not free money though. It's very code-heavy and
| technical-understanding-heavy and I've spent nearly 20 years
| actively developing it by now. One man wouldn't be able to
| just smash one out in a year, and you'd need some reasonably
| deep domain knowledge.
| atomicnature wrote:
| What's the product if I may ask? Or at least the general
| category of products you operate in - if you don't mind
| mentioning it.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I'm a bit shy about the details but it's used by
| engineers. Actually there's a lot of opportunity in
| software for engineers. They pay huge prices and the
| quality of what they have is often poor. I'm aware of
| some gaps in the market. For example, modeling thermal
| distortion due to robot welding. That's not what my
| product does but that's one where the existing solutions
| are something like $50,000/year and it's a hard problem
| in part because the software has to run faster than an
| actual welding robot making a prototype to be economical
| to model it in the first place. It takes some clever
| research to invent the secret sauce to get those speeds.
| jwxz wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This reminds me of the time Citi lost $900 million due to
| terrible software [0].
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-17/cit
| i-c...
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| This is the thing that was weird to me about the article: it
| seemed to focus very heavily on the idea of sharing financial
| details. To me, that's not "building" in public. That's just...
| sharing your finances. Building in public is sharing all little
| details about your product development process that most
| outsiders would never know or hear about otherwise. It's about
| sharing the dead ends that never saw the light of day, about
| sharing the roadblocks that made it difficult to get a feature
| or even whole product done. It's about sharing how
| collaboration happens and decisions are made.
|
| This focus on finance is distasteful to me. Not in the "it's a
| taboo subject" sense, but it just feels like focusing on the
| wrong thing.
|
| I really like your phrase, "work with the garage door open".
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'm ambivalent. Especially in my domain of games where
| sharing the financial breakdown can indeed help those "wrong"
| kind of people realize how little money there is in non-AAA
| games once all the cuts come in.
|
| So instead they make up shaky heuristics, see reviews and
| wishlists and must think "wow that game made a lot of
| money"... missing important context on how much was spent on
| labor/profit splits, or the area the team is in. Which
| muddies discussion on what a "successful" game even is (a
| topic already muddy even with all context).
|
| BUT, then again the tides have shifted so much in that people
| just take a "should have" approach. "you shouldn't have done
| it in X genre. You shouldn't have used Y software. Your game
| sucks so it obviously failed". So maybe bringing up any
| finances will always attract that crowd, not cause them to
| look into another place to make money.
| ozim wrote:
| There is a lot of that just like people think opening pizza
| place is a great business - if they look only cost of wheat
| and water, cheese; it sounds like god knows what margins
| are there, $1 ingredients and sell for $20. In reality
| margins are much lower and if you don't have a good spot
| you probably will loose money.
| crabmusket wrote:
| My take: the valuable parts of "building in public" are
| actually "learning in public" per https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-
| public
|
| The stuff in the OP is mainly just marketing/trends driven by
| social media platforms which has grown under the brand of
| "building in public".
|
| "Working with the garage door open" is a great phrase.
| 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.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I post on LinkedIn where people who make procurement decisions
| spend more time than on Twitter. LI is even weirder than
| Twitter.
| chuckadams wrote:
| > LI is even weirder than Twitter.
|
| Yeah but it's less toxic politics, more corporate sycophancy,
| lots of "How I became an effective cog maximally aligned with
| the company goals". People fueling their careers by burning
| their dignity.
| 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.
| zrkrlc wrote:
| > Posting about your ideas or your product just isn't that
| interesting.
|
| On the contrary, I wouldn't be using Capacities if they didn't
| have their entire development roadmap on your product, so
| thanks
| crabmusket wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Hang on, it feels like there's a contradiction here. Is the
| audience customers, or is it people who want to follow your
| path? Or are you thinking that's substantially the same
| audience?
|
| We are a Canny customer since the early days <3. And I feel
| that both product and financial information is interesting. I'm
| a user of your product, so how it works and how you think about
| it are significant to me as they'll affect my day to day life.
| But on the other hand, financial information is something that
| gives me confidence in you as a business. Both can create a
| sense of emotional investment beyond the transactional
| relationship we have.
|
| But we're just a regular old software business, not indie
| hackers and nor does "building in public" describe how we work.
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > retty-looking tools and products that aren't particularly
| innovative but make for nice screenshots.
|
| I'm not as cynical with the idea, but you identified the core
| issue (be it the algorithm or people that came first is an
| exercise for the reader): Code doesn't make for good engagement
| with the current structure of social media. your web design or
| visualization or even simple pie charts of performance
| differences (obligatory https://www.hackingsap.com/blog/wp-
| content/uploads/dilbert_p...) is what gets people in. visuals
| what may or may not be the actual selling point of your
| project.
|
| I don't really know how to get over that hump. You need some
| base audience first, and you want to make sure you aren't
| forgotten. So some public building will always be needed to
| maintain that.
| 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.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| Designer here. Got real into no-code back in 2021 as it was
| really heating up. Seemed like a natural move as I could better
| understand the logic of what's happening on the back end and also
| build products solo. Build in public (BIP), somewhat
| frustratingly for me, was a huge part of a few of the communities
| I got into. One was led by a marketing-minded "maker", and the
| other a great inspiring guy who was a bit the inverse.
|
| Everyone in each community became pretty evangelical about BIP
| due to group think. I bought in at first but became very
| skeptical eventually as well. Not only do I question the actual
| efficacy here both in $$ and quality of work, but I think it's a
| bit inconsiderate to expect everyone to be on board with being
| this open with their work or push as hard as they did.
|
| I'll occasionally post a bit of what i'm working on but I also
| after following many "makers" and the like, started becoming
| really bored with every detail of what they are working on. I say
| just show me a case study usually unless I'm already intrigued
| with the end product or you are doing something of great
| interest/impact
| binary132 wrote:
| I think the phenomenon of a relatively niche social market
| getting flooded is nothing new and unfortunately it's going to
| continue (see also: app stores). I do wonder if eventually people
| will catch on to the fact that it is the state of the modern open
| commons, and a new dynamic will need to be devised if they don't
| like this one or wish to continue chasing the frontier.
| vincentpants wrote:
| > If you follow enough indiehackers like me, Twitter/X will start
| recommending posts for you.
|
| I think there's your first problem right there. I recommend
| seeking dev communities on more federated social networks. I have
| found there to be more support and less clout/lore building than
| on Twitter. And supportive communities ship products!
| cageface wrote:
| It might be effective at building an audience for a new app but
| it requires much more engagement in social media than I'm up for.
| Reddit, on the other hand, I've found to be a pretty good place
| to build an audience and mostly without the toxicity of X.
| faizmokh wrote:
| I assume in most cases people use it as a way to motivate them to
| finish their side projects. The projects might or might not make
| it but I found it interesting to follow.
|
| Of course there are outliers like those who keep sharing their
| MRR, ARR, etc and then down the line sell an e-book on how to
| replicate their "success". I have followed enough "baits" to
| notice the pattern and ignore.
| datahack wrote:
| Building in public comes down to a few core things: marketing
| your product, staying sane, and getting noticed. It's a way to
| get people talking about what you're building before it's even
| done. The journey itself becomes the story, pulling in an
| audience that feels connected to your work.
|
| For a lot of solo founders, though, it's not just about
| visibility. It's about support. Building something alone can be
| isolating, and sharing your progress becomes a way to stay
| connected, even when you're grinding away in a room by yourself.
| The openness keeps you grounded and helps ward off the burnout
| that comes with long stretches of isolation.
|
| It also puts you on the radar of other entrepreneurs and
| investors. They see what you're up to and can offer feedback,
| partnerships, or even funding without you having to chase them
| down. You're essentially creating a public portfolio of your work
| in real time.
|
| Some people also use it as a humblebrag--a way to show off
| without being too obvious about it. That's fine if that's your
| thing, but for most, it's a way to turn the lonely process of
| building into something more connected and human.
|
| And I think that shouldn't be discouraged.
| laike9m wrote:
| Definitely agree. Sorry if the article sounds a bit negative,
| but I'm overall still in favor of building in public, for
| various reasons like the ones you mentioned.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Wow, I looked at that buildinpublic hashtag and got serious stock
| market trader forum energy feeling from the posts. Yea people are
| doing work but its the same kinda thing where the stock people
| will post a 3000 word write up everyday about their market
| thoughts but are still not really doing anything. Its like energy
| looking for a place to be used but in the meantime why not run in
| place till we drop?
|
| I guess this is what kids with rich parents whos trust fund hasnt
| matured yet do to kill time nowdays?
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| They'll call it "hustle" because other similarly-
| bored/don't-want-to-do-the-work people will look at it and
| comment, believing it to be the same as real work.
| lioeters wrote:
| > Its like energy looking for a place to be used but in the
| meantime why not run in place till we drop?
|
| Reminds me of the crypto space during the peak of its hype,
| where people wrote a flood of articles and software, attracting
| attention, claiming to be important and world-changing. Yet a
| year or two later, have evaporated into much ado about nothing.
| I'm not discounting the possibility that some of it will
| eventually become popular and practical, but there was sure a
| lot of smoke and mirrors.
|
| The Hustle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
| spondyl wrote:
| For anyone interested in a counter-point (ie; "Transparency is
| not inherently good and here's why"), the paper "Transparency is
| Surveillance" is a nice read:
| https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUTIS.pdf
|
| It basically talks about how people will change their reasoning
| to suit public opinion when they work publically. You might
| imagine a scientist who gets a public grant and is required to
| share their findings publically.
|
| In this hypothetical scenario, let's say their findings are
| required to be explainable to the public at large. The reality is
| that when you're building anything (whether it's a theory or a
| product), the reality is that causes and effects are not always
| clear nor will they ever be as we see with the human body for
| example.
|
| As such, while we might think imposing transparency would
| increase trust, the reality is you'll often find ad-hoc
| justifications for why things are the way they are rather than
| just saying "We don't know why X or Y".
|
| The author also presented the same ideas as a talk for anyone who
| prefers video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcEJY61FKIc
| laike9m wrote:
| Author here. I'm glad to see so many meaningful discussions
| triggered by this post. Despite raising concerns, overall I still
| see "building in public" as a positive trend. Like all trends,
| things emerge and change over time, so we'll see how "building in
| public" evolves.
|
| If you'd like to sponsor my work, feel free to check out an app I
| developed:
|
| https://xylect.app/
|
| With one-click, Xylect explains your selected text using an AI
| knowledge engine, no matter which app you're currently using.
| It's like bringing Perplexity + dictionary to every app.
|
| I'm also on Twitter/X and Mastodon. I'll share more thoughts in
| the future:
|
| - https://twitter.com/laike9m
|
| - https://mastodon.social/@laike9m
| j45 wrote:
| Building in public to speak to your customers pain points as an
| audience is one thing.
|
| Building in public for entrepreneurs as audience porn to -feel
| good about feeling good is a lot harder unless its a product for
| them.
|
| To me, it's doesn't always make sense to uncover unmet demand in
| public. But, my own bias in that sentence is I'm aware of that
| enough to perhaps know the difference, and I very well still
| might done it if I was starting out.
|
| It's good to speak to the problems of your clients - building in
| that public is what can be helpful.
|
| I like the indiehackers community a lot, but there's no shortage
| of lurkers who will imitate. The goal is getting ahead and
| staying ahead and leveraging positioning others may never
| understand.
| d13 wrote:
| What is the "indie hacker community"?
| surfingdino wrote:
| Frontenders or marketers writing micro SaaS thinking that they
| are building the next Salesforce. Mostly lead gen and other
| sales support apps.
| ocean_moist wrote:
| The people described in the article tie the value/success of
| their product to how much buzz it creates. "Building in public"
| has shifted away from a way to get initial beta testers and
| feedback into an echo chamber of clout. This whole process is
| antithetical to the true success of any project.
|
| There is way too much stuff about all the meta around making
| projects and just plain clout chasing rather than sharing
| intellectually interesting projects. I had twitter for an hour
| before I deleted it because I realized it was just a big
| popularity contest. The SNR was just too low.
|
| I still think "building in public" is a good thing apart from the
| buzzword-y semantics it has taken on. The best way to do this is
| to talk only about the project and the technical challenges it
| has, and view "building in public" as a moral commitment rather
| than a marketing one. Perhaps "moral" is too strong a word. I
| really mean sharing things, not to boost your ego or flex status,
| but because you think it's actually cool/useful.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, I'm in the games and when I delved into this article
| comparing to games... it really just sounds like advertisement,
| not necesarily knowledge sharing. I thought maybe it'd be
| different for projects perhaps aimed at fellow hackers, but it
| sounds like it falls into the same traps of game development;
| treat it like PR, boost the wins, handwave the losses.
|
| So you run into all the issues non-native ads have: you become
| noise and the act of talking about your product is a nuisance
| rather than one to build curiosity. Even for completely free
| games, sadly (you can thank mobile for that). the huge majority
| of nobody really cares about you until they do.
|
| And tbf I get it: at least in a hacker scene you're usually
| trying to perform something somewhat novel and that brings in
| curious hackers. Games (especially indies as a business) rarely
| have any novel tech, especially since so many of them rely on
| the tech of a large engine to do the heavy lifting for you.
| bemmu wrote:
| I used to build in public (Candy Japan), and now don't.
|
| Good things. It does bring customers directly. At least for
| blogging, building in public posts can get some backlinks, which
| is great for SEO. For some time I had the #1 result for my top
| search term. That might make it worth it overall.
|
| Negative things. It motivates others to clone your project, as
| now people know that $X/month can be made doing that. Almost no-
| one will, but if your posts are seen by say 100k+ people then
| you'll have a few in there who might.
|
| It warps your own thinking, as now you have a bunch of people on
| social media who see your project as your identity. You start
| buying into the narrative of being this X project guy so you
| can't just go away to do Y, even if on a rational level you know
| no-one actually cares that much whether you do X or Y.
|
| Seems @levelsio has been immune to this, as he's been smart to
| have his identity be a guy who ships a variety of things quickly
| vs. just being say the "Nomadlist Guy" forever.
| inquisitor26234 wrote:
| thing about levelsio is you can copy his ideas but you don't
| have his existing audience, connections, and resources
|
| and the guy ships like a machine good lord
|
| "just code more carefully" jesus
| elicksaur wrote:
| Does he ship like a machine, or are his products relatively
| simple GenAI wrappers?
| inquisitor26234 wrote:
| ships like a machine yes
|
| his products being genai wrappers, some are partly yes.
|
| in his interview with lex fridman he explains how he built
| his recent photo ai one, yes most of it is wrapper on some
| ai service, but his team goes the extra mile of training
| models on their own so it looks more photorealistic than
| the generally available ones
|
| he built products before ai like nomadlist and remoteok.
|
| his hit and miss rates are as real as it gets
|
| https://x.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817
| elicksaur wrote:
| Yeah, kudos where kudos are due for making something that
| is easily tweaked, but I was thinking of a recent example
| of his "speed".
|
| Adding a "comic book" style in "4 minutes":
| https://x.com/levelsio/status/1836735235658072144
|
| If all you need to do to ship a new feature is add a
| prompt option in a configuration somewhere, yeah you can
| ship fast. And, again, all the props for making something
| that can iterate like that!
|
| I think what I wanted to but failed to convey by being
| pithy is: For the people out there comparing themselves
| and think they're "slow", they might be trying to solve a
| problem that can't be solved with a configuration tweak.
| It's ok that it takes more time then.
| laike9m wrote:
| With his influence and followers, I think @levelsio has made
| sure that, even if he has competitors, he's gonna gain more
| attraction than others and do better
| rozenmd wrote:
| I've noticed the effectiveness for bringing in customers taper-
| off over the years.
|
| I still build in public
| (https://maxrozen.com/articles?q=diaries), but spend more of my
| time on traditional marketing efforts instead.
| fsndz wrote:
| True, most indie hacker apps serve the needs or curiosity of
| other indie hackers or tech-curious people (think PhotoAI, SaaS
| boilerplates, etc.). The unwillingness of their creators to scale
| the business by hiring more developers and shipping additional
| features--making the apps B2B-worthy, for example--means these
| apps often remain within that niche. However, when you're already
| making millions per year, like Levels.io, you might decide that's
| enough. This is especially true since indie hacking often
| embraces an ethos opposed to strategies like VC funding or
| building large teams, which typically drive scaling.
|
| Some indie hacker projects do scale into successful bootstrapped
| businesses with teams of developers or receive VC funding, but
| that is the exception. Scaling requires the founder to have a
| larger vision beyond just making quick bucks and remaining
| independent--independence being a core motivation of indie
| hacking in the first place. https://www.lycee.ai/blog/levelsio-
| and-the-dilemma-of-premat...
| ssijak wrote:
| But most indie founders really do not want to have a big team
| or have a VC with their own incentives. And that is very valid.
| Many people put value in other things than seeking maximum
| growth. "small growth" or earning enough to be financially
| independent is good enough for a lot of people.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Can agree with the post.
|
| I, also, discovered build-in-public and indie hackers communities
| about 6-8 months ago, after I failed at "build it, and they will
| come". Since then, I have revived my Twitter/Mastodon/LinkedIn,
| followed some people with similar goals, and shared my progress.
|
| Eventually, I have realized that like any community, most people
| are not willing to do the job and would rather flood the internet
| with low quality questions like "what payment provider should I
| chose". People would glorify the "build 432 in 12 months, and see
| what sticks" approach, thus making their content repetitive
| ("hey, just launched Y on PH, support my launch!!").
|
| And even the "big players", like levelsio, would post irrelevant
| stuff such as criticism of EU. Sure, everyone can post what they
| want, but my desire was to follow people who are smarter, and
| more successful than me, in order to learn from them, and not be
| involved in politics. After ~8 months of being there (there =
| Twitter) on a daily basis -- I quit cold turkey. It's not worth
| it.
|
| I shared some of my thoughts in my (other) blog [0].
|
| [0] https://thesolopreneur.blog/posts/on-buildinpublic-and-
| indie...
| laike9m wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I had the same feeling that browsering
| Twitter timeline is not so helpful overall, though there are
| good posts from time to time so you still can't ignore it.
|
| I actually enjoy reading levelsio's non-indie-related posts,
| but that 's me personally.
| skwee357 wrote:
| I'd rather read a book / listen to a podcast from someone
| like Rob Walling, then navigate the Twitter feed of endless
| "welp, someone copied my SaaS" in order to get an occasional
| gem.
|
| I also like his tweets, but it has nothing to do with
| learning how to build a business.
| WA wrote:
| Kudos on realizing this after only 8 months. The blog post is
| spot on. The snarky tweet about _chad b2b dev_ is basically
| true, except it doesn 't have to be B2B. B2C works, too. Just
| stay clear of the mother of all grifts: telling others how to
| make money online.
| Stem0037 wrote:
| Interesting take. I've been in the indie hacker scene for a while
| and I've noticed the same trend. The "build in public" movement
| has definitely become oversaturated.
|
| While transparency can be valuable, I agree that many are
| overdoing it, especially with revenue posts. It often feels like
| peacocking rather than genuine sharing of insights.
|
| I think the key is to focus on providing actual value to your
| audience. Instead of just posting numbers, share the strategies
| that led to those numbers, or the challenges you faced along the
| way. That's much more useful for other founders.
| rikroots wrote:
| I have a canvas library which was in serious need of a
| community. One of the things I tried to find that community was
| joining the indie hackers website - I mean, building in public
| is the sort of thing I'm already doing with my library's public
| GitHub repos yes?
|
| I made an intro post and started to setup a profile. On the
| profile page it says: "Create a founder profile to show off
| your products, your revenue, and your most ambitious goals and
| ideas" ... and that's when I realised this wasn't what I
| wanted. I'm not a founder; I don't have a product to sell.
| Everybody on the site is shouting about how many customers
| they've got and how they've cleared their first $100k - but I
| couldn't see anyone keen to discuss the intricacies of coding
| up a 2d canvas filter.
|
| So my library still doesn't have a community of people who want
| to discuss all things 2D canvas. It would be nice if I could
| find such a community (not on Reddit), or build one, but I'm
| glad I decided not to hustle with all the rest of the indie
| hacker crowd building stuff in public.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The problem with these places is they attract grifter-types
| who trainwreck the discussion because they are are focused
| more on taking than giving. Instead of talking about how they
| can serve their customers well, it's all about them.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Well, to answer the titular question: I'm sure a few people here
| have read it.
| longnguyen wrote:
| I used to "build in public" with my first app 2 years ago,
| KTool[0]
|
| But back then most indie hackers only share numbers in their
| monthly reports, me included[1]. And it's not just MRR
| screenshots with no content.
|
| Many shared their lessons, experiments, personal struggles... I
| can't stress enough how helpful this was. To me and to many
| founders I've talked with. It helps us with the loneliness and we
| learned from each other's mistakes...
|
| I made a lot of online friends during this period. We were (still
| are?) inexperienced founders who trying to bootstrap a profitable
| business and share the experience.
|
| I stopped BIP now, mostly because it takes more time and effort
| than I could afford. And posting MRR screenshots only is bragging
| in public, not building in public.
|
| BUT I still believe in the value of BIP, especially when for a
| newcomer.
|
| You may find people who genuinely support your journey, and if
| you're lucky, you might build a decent following on Twitter.
|
| Your customers root for you because of your personal and
| authentic "brand".
|
| Seasoned founders might reach out and point out what you're doing
| wrong, avoiding making the same mistakes (I did get a lot of
| valuable advice from successful founders--to me, this has been
| the biggest value I get out of BIP)
|
| BUT if you treat it as a marketing channel, it probably won't
| work. Like others mentioned, it's saturated and you're only
| attracting the wrong kind of audience.
|
| If I was to start again, I would treat BIP as the sandbox to
| launch my product: ask for feedback, search for a few early
| adopters who might benefit from my product but not necessarily my
| ICP.
|
| [0]: https://ktool.io
|
| [1]: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/ktool
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| KTool looks great! Where would you BIP nowadays? Usual spots
| seem to have a lot more noise than signal.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-23 23:02 UTC)