Indie hackers weigh in on whether or not to share metrics

Is it wise to become an open company and share your metrics publicly? Conventional wisdom says "no", but a good number of indie hackers have been doing it successfully for a while now.

I spoke with indie hackers who do it — and some who used to do it — to get their thoughts. Here's what they had to say. 👇

Open company pros

Marketing and visibility

👤 Guillaume Moubeche of Lempire:

The more you share honest stuff, the more people will relate to what you say and share your journey, hence more visibility for your company. 🚀

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

It is mainly a marketing ploy. And to be clear, it’s marketing for my own personal brand; not my product. My customers do not care at all about my “Open Startup”.

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

We benefit by getting attention. Our monthly open startup reports do very well on LinkedIn because being open is still novel in Switzerland, our home market. We are still the first and only "open startup" in Switzerland.

👤 Pieter Levels of Photo AI:

I think being open is definitely very useful marketing! Source

Trust

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

It creates trust because people see that their fees actually are invested into the product; not into the CEO's Lamborghini.

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

We think it helps to build trust. Most of our customers have committed for years, so this matters.

Motivation

👤 Guillaume Moubeche of Lempire:

I think that the more you share your metrics with the world, the more you will feel the need to do better the next time you share something.

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

It's energizing and satisfying to share metrics. You feel accountable toward your community and any progress makes you feel proud.

Feedback

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

We often get valuable feedback. For example, people questioned our hosting costs and pointed us to better options.

Clarity of vision

👤 Guillaume Moubeche of Lempire:

It allows me to reflect on everything we've already accomplished and have a clear vision of what's next to come!

Good habits

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

It pushes you to have good habits and sane accounting.

Community

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

We wanted to share with our community where we're at.

Culture

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

Transparency is part of our culture. Our software is open source, so it felt natural to share our business metrics.

Compensation model

👤 Nathan Barry of ConvertKit:

Transparency is key to [our compensation model]. All of our growth numbers are available on a public dashboard.

Inside the company we run fully open books so every team member can see where we are spending money and calculate profit sharing. Source

Process of creation

👤 Josh Pigford of Detangle.ai:

The real value is seeing the process of creation. It begets more of the same from both you and those around you. It’s contagious. Source

Becoming bona fide

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

The short answer is that when I got started, 3 years ago, everyone was doing it. I thought it was required to be a bona fide indie hacker.

Inspiring people and paying it forward

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

I, myself, have benefited greatly from other open startups, especially Buffer. As I had no entrepreneurial role models in my family and had not studied or learned anything in that direction, the Open Startup Reports from Buffer were a great inspiration for me on my path as an entrepreneur.

👤 Guillaume Moubeche of Lempire:

Most people never share real actionable tips or costs. I will never forget the first time I read a transparent article about a startup story.

I got so inspired that day! It felt like I was part of their journey and I wanted to make people feel the same way.

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

I was keen to share the journey, which I thought could influence other aspiring tech entrepreneurs.

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

It inspires others and helps the tech ecosystem.

Open company cons

Copycats and trolls

👤 Josh Pigford of Detangle.ai:

When it’s going well, competitors come out in full force.

When it’s going poorly, you get hounded by trolls and feel far more discouraged. Not to mention folks love to misinterpret the data. Source

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

The risk is that the likelihood of copycats increases. But I am fine with that. Despite copycats being very annoying, they actually increase the size of the market.

In my case, where you could argue that my product created a category, this is super important.

My copycats will forever be playing catchup with me.

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

I think the main risk is that being open attracts copycats who want to replicate your "success". I've heard from founders that this has prevented them from sharing their revenues.

I do not worry if others copy us. I will worry if they stop copying us.

Limited time

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

It takes time to share data and you might want to consider spending that time on growth.

Negative perceptions

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

Small companies might look too small to close a deal. But, if a lead walks away for that, they probably would have done so anyway.

No upside

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

#BuildInPublic has become too mainstream. If the story of being open is not going to give an advantage, then there is no point in doing it. So be careful what you might get into.

My initial assumption was that we would go viral and every bootstrapped tech startup or Indie Hacker would flock to use our service. This did not happen.

Hurts price negotiations

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

The risks are related to price negotiations. If the customer knows you have too much cash in the bank, or that you face difficulties, they may be tempted to play with that. But, in the end, we never faced the problem.

Overfocus on what people think

👤 Josh Pigford of Detangle.ai:

My general feeling (having shared nearly every possible metric of my past companies for the better part of a decade) is that being open with those is a net negative.

You become hyper aware of what others think. Source

Fear of failure

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

I was worried that if I failed, people would end up laughing at me.

If you do it, here's how to do it right

Just do it

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

I recommend being open. For us, the benefits have greatly outweighed the risks.

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

I encourage anyone to join the movement!

Don't overthink it

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

Don’t overthink it. You should be focusing on creating a product that your customers love.

Be real

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

Be as transparent as possible and do not exaggerate your successes. Don't hide your failures either. Speak openly about what works and what does not.

Show progress; not performance

👤 Josh Pigford of Detangle.ai:

The real value comes from seeing momentum and progress. It is NOT in numbers or takeaways or learnings. Source

Share this info (and only this info)

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

We share anything related to revenues: the monthly amount billed, our MRR, cash in an out, and our cash balance.

We also share our number of customers, the cost of our hosting infrastructure, and the cost of our tools. You can see that on https://metrics.cg-wire.com.

We don't share subtle metrics like churn, though. They are hard to understand from an outside perspective. For these reasons, I think we will remove our cash flow metrics too at some point.

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

In our monthly open startup reports, we share our revenues and our costs in detail, including salaries. Our web analytics are public as well.

Here's our latest report, for November 2023.

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

I share revenue and signups. I think it’s enough and I don’t want to give away too much information.

Put a spin on it

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

You need a new spin on it. Just sharing your metrics on Twitter probably won't get you a lot of attention.

Leverage Linkedin

👤 Caspar von Wrede of KeepTheScore:

I have been sharing my metrics on LinkedIn, which not many people are doing, so I get a fair bit of attention there.

👤 Manoj Ranaweera of SkilledUp Life:

We share details through LInkedin Audio events.

👤 Stefan Vetter of Friendly:

Our monthly open startup reports do very well on LinkedIn.

Make it easy

👤 Frank Rousseau of CGWire:

Make it as simple as possible to update your metrics. It's great to share progress but it doesn't have to come at the cost of your product.