Downsides of building in public?
For those of you who are building products in public, have you encountered any unexpected drawbacks to the process? I've heard a lot of pros (accountability, increased feedback loop, better customer acquisition, etc) but never really hear about the cons.
A few I can think of off the top of my head, all of course depend on how public you are. Whether just a little to full with bare metrics etc.
Competitors can see your current status
Competitors can see your future roadmap
Competitors can see how much money you're making
Investors (if you go that route) can see your status and bow out before you even get a chance to talk to them
Users can see your service and see how many devs are on the team
Users can see your progress and decide it's not fast enough
Users can see how much money you're making and justify to themselves it's not worth paying for
Users can see your level of funding and/or team and decide not to get your tool because you might not be around long
I'm sure there's a ton more too...
are these actual cons or just things you are imagining? The pros that Brent is talking about are actual pros people report. We can all imagine what the cons might be, but it would be very useful to know what are the ACTUAL cons.
Yes, these are real. All of these happened at the last startup I was at.
Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them: https://sivers.org/zipit
This goes against the grain of building in public. My impression is that it depends on the personality and if "the public" is actually a support group or a group of bystanders.
On my custom made wallpaper, I have:
Taken from an inspiring talk from Laracon EU/US, but don't remember which one right now.
This is true but usually building in public is more along the lines of: "today I shipped this" or setting a goal to ship in general, not really dreaming out loud of what your product could be. At least that is how I practice it.
For businesses with high profit margins like ours, I fear publicizing this will dissuade clients regardless of the value we're providing.
I'm still trying to get on board with the full transparency thing.
My shit is completely on blast within this community. And I'll admit that no small part of me is worried that someone will build my idea faster and better.
But I need the accountability and motivation. I've built more in the last month since I've joined IH, than I have for the last six months.
Curious why you're asking ...