Why is building in public so popular?
Dmitry
16 replies
Why do people really care about the building process, where I believe the most interesting and hard part is starting a product and company?
Replies
Arda Ertem@arda_ertem
Mainly because there have been many successful examples of it during the last 5 years that positively impacted its popularity.
What would be interesting is to have a research that compares build in public to stealth mode.
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@arda_ertem I think this is a reasonable explanation. Not because it allows you to build some relationships with potential customers, but because there were a few success stories. Can anyone count the failure stories instead?
@atominte I wrote an article that explain the impact of BIP on pricing our early access plan for instance. I can't deny its effect.
https://blog.scrintal.com/how-we...
There is good writing about it from PH founder https://www.producthunt.com/@rrh... somewhere, but I can't find it right away.
There are a few reasons why building in public has become popular in recent years. First, it allows entrepreneurs to get feedback on their ideas early on and iterate based on that feedback. Second, it builds transparency and trust with potential customers, partners, and investors. Finally, it can help entrepreneurs to build a following and generate buzz around their product or service.
Launching soon!
@alex_vidon_ai I agree with your stance. Building in public is very popular because it is the best way to gain publicity and build credibility and visibility for the brand. Building in public can be used as a unique, interactive way to communicate online and offline.
@alex_vidon_ai Building transparency can only work if your potential clients are developers. I believe that most eCommerce or video production customers do not read buildinpublic threads. So it works only from devs to devs right?
@alex_vidon_ai @qudsia_ali I agree, but what if your potential customers are small business owners? The chances of building credibility and visibility with buildinpublic for such an audience is equal to zero.
Launching soon!
When you build in public, you're forcing yourself to acknowledge the hard work it takes to build a side project and display your commitment to the world. By building in public, you're showing your supporters that you know how hard it is to create a business, and you can overcome what most fail at. It makes you a role model and inspires others to do the same.
@umar_saleem Thank you, it seems reasonable. But what I see in buildinpublic is about the tools people use and the number of commits. I suppose it is not so interesting as an attempt to start the product, because building a product is usually easy, but starting makes a lot more mistakes and failures. Why don't you share it? It should be very interesting.
It's a great way to stay accountable and hone your messaging and positioning. It's also a fantastic opportunity to build community and connect with other like-minded individuals in your industry which can lead to some valuable partnerships or future employees. Additionally, raising money becomes much easier when you have an engaged online following that is invested in what you're doing - VCs love To see social proof! Lastly, testing and validating your business model through publicly sharing progress or data findings helps give people confidence in what you're working on while also providing extremely useful feedback directly from your target market.
I think it's helpful because it helps you detach from your product. When you release the buggy, crappy version of what you're making, you're able to see all its flaws more objectively.
And that'll save you a heck of a lot of heartache down the road imo. I made an ellipse template on Kickstarter but didn't put it through any public scrutiny beforehand. It took me like half a year to realize that this thing wasn't really solving any problems lol.