Are you building in public?
I was wondering if "building in public" could be a good way to find new ideas and missing features - straight from the voice of your customers. The strongest benefit I see is that it’s often difficult for makers to see usability issues when they’re so close to the product. Of course, it comes with another level of transparency for your startup so new concerns may arise. But to me, it seems like the benefits outweigh the risks.
Do you let your customers decide what to build next? Please share your experience (with the link to your community, if you have one).
A lot of "customers" won't want to pay anything or pay you less than you deserve. I'd be wary of that approach. Also, make stuff you want to build.
Tortured metaphor: I once went to see some DJs play. They had run out of ideas and nervously asked on the mic " what do you want?" and of course everyone just shouted their own choices. People don't pay to go to a club and then not have direction from the DJ.
So it's up to the maker to have the vision.
I'm not sure if my approach qualifies as "building in public". With that said, I see that sharing the progress on my projects helps to get early feedback from the community. This feedback is basically what you describe -- everything we as creators are too blind to see.
It doesn't mean I have to implement every suggestion coming from the community or let the community drive the progress and priorities of my projects. That is still under my control. The main benefit is the information I get early, what I do with that information is an entirely different question.
Some experts in "building in public" that I'll recommend are @stephsmith , @anthilemoon , and @petecodes . I hope they can say more about the topic.
I've personally found building in public has done amazing things for me. Not necessarily in the sense of letting people decide where I'm going, but to come along for the ride. I track a lot of my goals publicly at stephsmith.io/open and have found that tweeting progress of my projects along the way has been super beneficial. There are obviously counter examples to this, but I believe that building great things is all about execution and very little about ideas, so as you say, the pros outweigh the cons.
Not sure it's a great way to get ideas from users, but is a good way to get feedback on stuff you're building as you're building it.
Helps to make sure any assumptions you've made are accurate and the approach you're taking is in line with what users are looking for.
I'm sharing my progress for building Podcast Ping on one hour saas, been getting feedback in comments and messages from viewers.
Hi Jacob!
I am building my first project in public: https://makerstack.club/. It is a community with a focus on the maker rather than on the product. I build features based on feedback from users inside the community. I think making people engage with your product is key here to further grow it. People will have the feeling that they have impact on the way the product goes. I really is worth trying it out, you can allways join the community we have some makers who build in public and we are glad to help!
Thanks for sharing @nickverhaege! Unfortunately, this page is not loading for me.
I am still working on this issue for now. I could not figure it out yet. However, there is a simple solution of trying a different web browser.
Yep, we are building in public. I think it’s one of the best ways to get fast feedback and to ensure you’re building something that people want.
You can view our changelog here: https://himalayas.app/changelog
Hi Jacob. I'm building a community of makers on https://kollood.co. The idea is to promote collaboration in a fun, gamified way. While my idea is not launched yet, I get feedback from viewers on YouTube
That being said I don't think you should let users have the ultimate say in what you build next. Use their feedback as more of a guideline.
I was semi-building in public the last 30 days because I was part of Makerpad T30 challenge. @Guziq
VenturesList is a proud project. Whenever people give me feedback on forums, social media etc. I will make sure to save their ideas into my develop log.
Getting prospecting customers before a launch is really important. And I am always comfortable to screen shot my scrappy projects and publish online :)
You decide. Your customers can voice their opinion.