My little learnings over the last few days, building in public (Hint: I messed up and learning)
I believe that building in public is good, and I have evangelized it in my company as a full-time marketer and also to other solopreneurs.
Recently, I launched a side project that reduces 70% cost for AI chatbots by bringing in your own AI key, and I felt it was a viral product.
Last year, I had a thousand-plus followers on X, but I went on a digital detox, so I was off from all social media for 3 months.
I didn't realize X Twitter would delete the account after 30 days of deactivation, so currently I only have 29 people, and I took premium plus. It's so stressful to just go and reply to 50-80 people/day, and I am getting like two or three followers.
I do know it's a hustle, but then when there is a full-time job, I have to spend a lot of time replying to people. I'm finding it a bit hard.
Reddit was a bit hard for me to figure out, but then a few posts got banned in a few places and really got good comments. One or two people are very harsh.
One of my friends saw the website, and he said he did not get what I'm trying to say, and it's more of a visual representation problem. I also mixed lifetime deals with keeping the software cost too low.
I spent a lot of time figuring out the pricing and all that, and it's already tiring.
Building in public on platforms like Reddit, I realise it's more of a long-form storytelling approach + provide a lot of value.
On Twitter, of course, if you have an audience, you can do it with a small post,/
Going forward, I decided I would take it slow but be consistent.
I am an ultra runner. Last year I ran for 12 hours, covering 82.2 km. The way I did it is that, for a couple of years, I trained not too much daily, but I was consistently doing - just one run every alternate day and one workout every alternate day, straight for two years.
Similarly, here too, I should worry less about daily intensity, and I guess I need to focus on consistency.
Building in public is not enough; providing value first(not just the product), is the only way to grow organically.
If you have any thoughts about this, then I would love to hear 's only day four or five. I did try to run Reddit ads. I spent $23 and got like 45,000 impressions on ads, but 130 to 150 clicks, which is not much of a conversion.
This was pre-maturely done, I feel, but I do feel I can keep $10 and run ads with different messaging angles, see what sticks. Then I can go try to get those people on board more organically.
I know this is the reverse of what people do, and it's okay. Validation should be fast.
Wish me luck :)
PS: If you have advice for me, please do share, I need it more than ever.
I appreciate the honesty—most founders won't admit when things aren't working. But here's what I'm seeing: You're solving the wrong problem.
You're frustrated with X (hard to grow from 29 followers), Reddit (confusing), and ads (low conversion). So you're thinking "consistency + right channel = growth."
But your friend already told you what the real problem is: Nobody understands what you're selling.
Look at what you said: "AI chatbots that reduce 70% cost by bringing your own AI key." That sounds smart to you because you built it. But a potential customer reading that doesn't think "this is for me." They think "cool concept. Not sure if I need it."
That's not a channel problem. That's a clarity problem.
You spent time on pricing, visual design, mixing lifetime deals and recurring. All the wrong order. Before you figure out how much to charge or what it looks like, you need to answer the actual question: Who is this for and what specifically changes in their business?
Right now, you're grinding 50-80 replies a day on X trying to build an audience. But you don't have a message that makes people want to follow you. You're building reach for a positioning that doesn't work yet.
That's backwards. And it's exhausting.
Here's the uncomfortable part: You're blaming consistency and channels. But the real reason you're not converting is that your website copy doesn't clearly articulate the transformation. So people see your ads, don't understand what you do, and leave.
Consistency matters. But consistency with the wrong message just means you fail slower.
The ones moving fast aren't grinding to build audiences first. They're getting crystal clear on who they're talking to and exactly what changes for that person. Then the message works, and consistency compounds.
You have the product (70% cost reduction). You just haven't figured out how to say it in a way that makes someone think "I need this." And grinding on X won't fix that.
— consistency over intensity. The fact that you're self-aware enough to recognize the mistakes early is actually the hard part. Most people keep sprinting on the wrong channel for months before admitting it.
A few things that resonated from our own experience building an AI SaaS: the "reply to 50-80 people a day" grind on X is real but the ROI is brutal when you're starting from near-zero followers. What worked better for us was going deep in 2-3 communities where our target us— I'd be careful mixing those too early. We found that the people who buy lifetime deals and the people who become your best recurring customers are often completely different audiences. LTD buyers optimize for deals, not for your specific product. Figure out who genuinely needs what you built and would pay monthly first, even if it's just 5 people.
Your Reddit ad experiment is actually smart — $23 to learn which messaging angles resonate is cheap market research. I'd keep testing messaging angles at small budgets before going all-in on any channel. Good luck, keep sharing the journey.