Does “building in public” work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#221

Post by CM30 » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 8:34 AM UTC

wheatgreaser wrote: post #215

CM30 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

is there like a right way to do it?

Market in places your customers frequent in addition to developer/creator related communities. Have a social media presence, post in relevant subreddits/Discord servers/forums, target your actual audience with paid ads if you go that route, try to get coverage from sites and creators that target your customers, present at events that your customers visit etc.

You really want to be known as an 'authority' in your area of choice and have your product in front of as many people in its target audience as possible, so people trust you know what you're doing and take you seriously.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#222

Post by reportgunner » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

colecut wrote: post #212

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That seems a bit harsh. They aren't forcing anyone to watch or scamming anyone by building in public.

Forcing no, tricking yes

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#223

Post by reportgunner » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 1:39 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #145

pembrook wrote: post #10

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,…

> 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.

Same like cryptobros selling signals or trading courses to other cryptobros.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#224

Post by surfingdino » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 9:45 AM UTC

chuckadams wrote: post #205

surfingdino wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I post on LinkedIn where people who make procurement decisions spend more time than on Twitter. LI is even weirder than Twitter.

> 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.

Agreed, there is no dignity on LI.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#225

Post by atomicnature » Thu, Sep 26, 2024, 11:20 AM UTC

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #192

atomicnature wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

That's an interesting example, thanks for sharing.