Did building in public actually get you users?
A couple of my recent posts led to good conversations. Now I’m trying to figure out what gets someone from reading about a product to actually trying it.
For those who’ve launched something: where did your first users come from? Were they following what you were building, or did you find them somewhere completely different?
I’m getting Inquir Compute ready to launch. It’s a platform for running apps, databases and background jobs. I’ve been sharing what I’m working on here, but I’m still figuring out how to reach the people who might use it.
Share your product and one specific thing you did that brought in users.
Which community did you post in? Who did you reach out to? What did you say?
Rough numbers would help, even if it was just two or three people. I’m interested in things a solo founder could try, without an existing audience or a big budget.
Replies
For my first few users, building in public didn't really do much. Most of them came from me replying in threads where people were already complaining about the problem
@marina_gomel5 same for me, got first users from forum thread discussing aws issues. Also reached out ex-collegues.
@marina_gomel5 Do you think it’s better to build an audience first, or just keep sharing what you’re building and let the right people discover it naturally?
LinkedIn was actually really helpful when I was building one of my music production products. I would post updates with videos on there and it hit a niche of people interested in music tech who would then go try the app and give me feedback. After a few rounds of that I tried it with Reddit which was more hit or miss (and often my posts would get deleted because they were marked as self-promotion). Then one day, a few reddit posts really connected, and I got a few hundred users in a day. So it can definitely help!