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Does “building in public” work?

laike9m.com

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Re: Does “building in public” work?

#91
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.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that pretty much rules out email, maps/navigation, messaging, and quite a bit more. Somehow, this suggests that perhaps your rubric needs amending.

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."

"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.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#93
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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?

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#94
post #91

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. Anyw…

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.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#95
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.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#96

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,…

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.

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

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.

The Bandwagon effect, maybe?

Re: Does “building in public” work?

#100

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,…

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.

They are those people, just a bit more technical.
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