Anything else I should do when building in public?
Hey everyone!
I'm preparing to launch my latest project(LeetDesign) over the next few weeks and I was planning to start building in public from 0$ MRR.
I've seen a bunch of articles online talking about different methods I can take to share the journey.
So far I'm planning on:
- Sharing MRR publicly in my Twitter Bio (thanks TweetSync + ChartMogul)
- Tweeting(@dannyhabibs) about the lessons, milestones, highs and lows
- Sharing a
/openpage with even more analytics around usage
Is there anything else I should be considering? Anything I should watch out for?
Came here for the comments
I am not really big or prolific in regard to #buildinpublic, but for me screenshots do very well. Screenshots of reports, designs, work in progress. Anything that is a bit uncommon and unique seems to work pretty well.
This has been my experience as well with WIP.
Thanks for the tip!
Any particular screen shot tools you recommend?
I have to admit that I use OSX's Finder's CMD+Shift+4 (etc) a lot. Too convenient and builtin, and totally sufficient imo (also does video!) unless you are a hardcore screenshotter lol.
If you want to really take your screenshots up at least a few levels, check out xnapper from @tonydinh ...
@danielgh - You're a founder of a YC backed company. That's impressive. I'm curious to know if LeetDesign is same as HackPack? If not; what makes you want to work on a new project?
If yes - What does YC say about building in public? It'd be awesome if you could share YC's recommended approach towards growing startups. I've read a ton of articles about how YC forces founders to grow their startup; but want to know if they have an recommended mechanism to do that.
So many things to unwrap here and I want to make sure I write up a proper response (I'm currently writing an article on my blog about the pivot and why I'm planning to build in public) but here are the cliff notes:
That's interesting. Would love to read your article about your pivot.
My only recommendation(from a rookie) is to build for the audience you are trying to attract. What are you launching and what problems are you solving for? Is there a personal story behind why you made this? See typefully as an excellent example and a useful tool for growth. Also, baremetrics if you want to share the product health analytics. https://baremetrics.com/features/smart-dashboards
Don't just post your wins, but also post your struggles!
100%! I've gone through so many ups and downs in the startup, I founded the company in 2020 and pivoted so many times. There have been some brutal moments during pivoting and I'm super open about them.
If anyone is pivoting and struggling with the feelings around it dont hesitate to reach out
Have you considered having an open company handbook too? Not sure if you have any other employees but i found it really interesting reading posthogs and gitlabs handbooks
Still just a solo project, but if Im lucky enough to scale up then I'd definitely be down to document my experience running an organization haha
Gitlabs docs are the gold standard for Async work from what I've seen so far
Hey Daniel! You could consider DM'ing people who you think would be interested in the launch?
Definitely! Once its ready, I'm going to start marketing pretty hard haha
Whatever you share, always try to wrap it in a lesson or takeaway for the audience. Just plainly sharing MRR is not very useful for people...
Great tip! Appreciate it I'll definitely adopt this approach
cheers!
What is an "/open" page?
Its a page that carries a bunch of extra stats, bannerbear has an awesome one that I hope to emulate: http://bannerbear.com/open
Ah, nice. And impressive. Not sure I want the world to be able to participate on this detail level. But you do you. It definitely takes guts to be this open.