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7 Comments

Cons with Building in Public?

I've been a bit hesitant to start publicising me building a product I'm working on. We are still a few months away from launch, and I don't want to jump the gun.

Does anyone have any bad experiences with doing this? Negative feedback thats demotivating, stolen ideas etc

  1. 3

    I haven't built in public, but negative feedback could happen even if you build in private. ideas can be "stolen"/copied afterwards. demotivating is a personal thing, your motivation should be intrinsic and not external driven. The only reason I don't do it is because of the time overhead. I work in short bursts. 5mins, 10, 15, 20, etc. Setting up overhead of recording and all that is just not worth it to me. Plus I have lil kids running around, making noise, interrupting etc. Plus I see no benefit, I'm not targeting developers, so it's not like I'm going to build an audience by doing that.

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      I think the biggest benefit would be immediate feedback, but you make a good point with the target market though. I guess it comes down to effort vs reward

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    Certain there are pros and cons.

    Pros are if you start sharing now, you have a few months of marketing that can be super valuable. Other than building, you can also reach out to target user, get their buy in, get their feedback, all to make your product better at the launch. Imagine launching and then have no traction, that's usually very discouraging.

    Cons are getting your ideas out there too quick and someone come in and snap it. But as @segmond said, that will happen sooner or later, you can't avoid it. But if you can leverage building in public to build trust with your circle, they'll stick to you even though someone else creates the exact same product.

    And one thing important is that building in public actually doesn't mean sharing every single bit of product details with the public. It is about storytelling, and you pick out the best learning you have in your journey to share with people. You don't have to talk about what tech you use, how you build your secret sauce etc.

    I'm actually about to roll out part 2 of my building in public guide which covers some of this, would you like to be my early readers to give feedback? Let me know :)
    Here is part 1: https://kevoncheung.com/building-in-public

  3. 2

    building in public can be real great channel for initial customers way before the actual launch. one con I did find is the extra time it takes but if you consider it as marketing time and manage it properly I think it should be fine.

  4. 2

    I have looked into some of the successful products that are being built in public. One thing they shared was, that they all had a product already (MVP at least), they knew their vision of the product, where they are heading too.

    Building in Public seems like more of a channel to get a momentum and some visibility if done well. I can imagine it can have quite the opposite effect too, if you announce you are building in public, there might be no, or just few reactions, which can make you think it is not worth it.

    I am still learning about this, would like to do something similar "build in public" with my side project, but decided to wait until I have MVP working. For now I will be sharing my learnings weekly at least.

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      If there are no/few reactions. Won't that happen to you again when you launch? Marketing/Sales is a problem you have to solve. Why wait and do it later?

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        That is true, and I believe what I wanted to say with my comment (and your help) is, that just relying on making the project right now public might not bring anything, as someone else pointed out, it does require more time to manage from marketing point of view. (I have checked OPs previous posts, where it seems OP has a small audience(followers) at the moment, but I can be wrong).

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