Have you built in public?
I'm leaning towards the idea of building the last stages of my project in public. To gather feedback and generate some audience. I've read about it and the advantages it could bring.
But I want to ask the Indie Hackers community:
Have you built in public? How did you do it? Any pros and cons you can mention, based on experience? Any tips?
And of course, can you show us the product you built in public?
I have 3 companies, I shared revenue of all of these companies here on Indie Hackers. I'd like to update and build in public more, but it's very hard for me to find the time. I do this to share my story, and help other Indie Hackers.
You will get a lot more benefit from building in public if your target audience is broad, and other founders and Indie Hackers will find your tool valuable. I use all sorts of tools that I've found on Indie Hackers: FieldHelp, Versoly, ProfitKit, etc...
However, if you have a niche audience that doesn't hang out here you can expect almost no benefit. If you have a SaaS for laundromat owners, you aren't going to find customers, or users just by building publicly.
If you have the time, I would do it to give back to the community.
Thanks for your answer. I'm thinking that in the more niche scenarios you could still find some forums and online communities that could be interested. I want to talk about my product here but I know my potential users are elsewhere. Guitarists to be more specific.
Do it. There are lots of benefits.
Only downside is if you start paying too much attention to what others think.
this is a good point. if you can't manage this... might be hard.
I'm building my newsletter in public. Sharing subscribers, how I create content, my newsletter stack...
Advantages?
@8bit knows a thing or two about it.
oooooh yeah! let's go!
👉🏻 build in the open
whoot.
no cons. no cons. no cons.
all upside.
I have tried to, but I did so way too early. The biggest problem was that I had a certain long term vision, and that I was unable to deliver in a timely manner. After this experience I continued to build in relative silence, in order to be able to get the foundations just right. Now that's out of the way I'm able to ship new features in a pace I have never been able to before, which is nice, but would not have been able to if I was solely focussing on implementing and resolving feedback.
And by the way, the platform I'm still working on is Skyhop.
You can read the stories of indie hackers that build their startups in public, there is tons to learn from them :)
Thanks! Will check them out!