The hardest part of building in public isn’t shipping.
I thought building in public would be mostly about momentum and accountability. What I didn’t expect was how much of it would be about sitting with uncertainty. Sharing something early, watching the response (or lack of it), and trying to understand what that actually means.
Is the silence a signal? Is it timing? Is it clarity? Or is it just too early?
Learning to separate ego from signal has been harder than writing any code or shipping any feature. Most days, building in public feels less like progress updates and more like learning how to listen without overreacting.
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The hardest bit for me has been learning that most feedback comes from the wrong audience. Early on I'd get excited about engagement from people who'd never actually use what I'm building - other builders, general startup enthusiasts, etc. The silence from the people who would use it was deafening.
Now I try to pay more attention to who's engaging, not just how many. One DM from someone in my actual target market teaches me more than 50 likes from fellow indie hackers.
Still working on the ego separation though. Some days a well-timed "this looks useful" from a stranger makes my whole week. Other days I convince myself that silence means I should pivot everything.
I’ve fallen into the same trap of mistaking builder engagement for validation early on, even when those people were never going to use the product. The silence from the actual target audience is tougher, but it’s also more honest. One real DM from the right person beats a bunch of surface-level reactions.
The "separating ego from signal" framing resonates. Early on I kept reading into every like (or lack of) until I realized most engagement is just noise.
What helped me: treating silence as neutral data, not negative feedback. If no one responds, it might mean the post timing was off, the audience wasn't there, or the format didn't work — not that the idea itself is wrong.
Curious: have you found any patterns in what actually drives responses vs what falls flat? For me, posts with specific numbers or concrete learnings seem to get more traction than general reflections.
That's a good lens — specifics without chasing engagement. The balance between sharing openly and performing for metrics is tricky. I've been leaning toward "share what was genuinely surprising" as a filter.
That framing helped me too treating silence as neutral data instead of negative feedback. I’ve noticed that posts with something concrete (a specific mistake, number, or unexpected outcome) tend to spark more real responses, while general reflections often just get quiet agreement. Still trying to share specifics without chasing engagement for its own sake.