Is building a community before a product worth it?

From my personal experience, building a community before a business was a terrible strategy.

As an Indie Hacker, the only real metric that matters is dollars in the bank.

As most Indie Hackers are looking to/have already quit their jobs, your number one goal should be to get to revenue as fast as possible.

While some people spend years trying to build a community in the HOPE to one day monetise it, the best Indie Hackers are out there just speaking directly to customers while solving real problems.

Put your ego aside, build real shit, and make sure you're compensated for your work.

If you already have a active community in some niches then selling a product is not a big deal.
Just like niche based blogs selling affiliate products. For them product comes later first they build an audience.

I think you shouldn't build a community just for the purpose of selling a product. If you think a group of people would benefit from a community and you are willing to serve them for quite a while it may be the right thing to do. If the community itself provides enough value to it's members, it can be the product (paid membership etc).

I think I would flip it around and say, "What is it about my potential product could bind a community together?" If I can't think of something specific, then probably not worth the effort.

In my opinion, each project should be considered separately, and it all depends on the niche.
Here is my experience. A few years ago, I tried to start a business with my partner - an indoor track with radio-controlled cars for rent. We started building the community very late and launched ads when the track was ready. This type of entertainment was very new for our city and therefore advertising did not work very well and we paid a high price for rent. And it was a lesson for us that even before renting a building, it was necessary to start gathering people around this entertainment. And in the absence of such people, it would not be worth it to start implementing this project.

100% yes.

In fact, community based business is the next "base standard" for businesses.

Just like a website was a requirement all these years, having a community is also a new requirements.

Google: Community OS for a completely free and in-depth Notion community building operating system (not sponsored)

Not a community, but having an audience is a cheat code. Think about how easy it would be to release a product or service and get early users or customers if you had 100,000 people following you, or a newsletter with 10,000 subscribers, or a blog with 1000 visitors a day.

A community is a different beast. It can be incredibly difficult to get consistent engagement from others, you need to nurture it all the time. I would consider it extremely risky to sink so much energy into something without a product. It could all be for nought, though if you did build a sizeable and engaged community there would likely be other opportunities to monetise it.

No use of building a community if you do not know what you want to sell.

Randomly building a community and hoping an idea hits you means you will end up doing one of 4-5 things(I am sure there are exceptions.)

• Building a course on how to grow your Twitter followers.
• Build a course/community on how to use Twitter to sell.
• Build a SAAS product that helps you grow on Twitter or create content for Twitter.
• Create content for others.
• End up in the web3 world.

This is based on personal experience. Did option 2 for a little more than a year. Wasted a ton of money and time on it. Nothing to show for it.

Why not both? The process of embedding yourself in a community almost always creates a better product for the audience in the long term. This is a pretty popular way to do product development and is loosely called "build in public" here.

I spent 10 years building for no community. I built stuff I couldn't even get in people's hands because nobody knew or cared.

When I spent the last few years building a community, people could hardly wait for when I'd release a product.

The community you build is much more valuable than the skills or products you create along the way. It will follow you for many years to come.

Hi Molly,

Having a large, engaged audience is great. However, it's easier said than done.

If you think marketing your product is hard, try building an audience first. :-)

If you have a good product that is solving a real need, then your time is probably better spent advertising and selling that product. Profits are more powerful than likes and follows.

It's much easier to build a community off of a successful product, than it is to build an audience to promote a product.

I've been curating my newsletter for over a year and a half and I've just crossed 1800 subscribers. For another project, with no social media presence, I've added tens of thousands of subscribers with a minimum of effort. I don't even publish there, I just notify subscribers of upcoming sales.

If you don't have a product, it might be tough to build a community.

I grew Syften to $6000 MRR without a community.

I'm starting to build a community now, with the knowledge I acquired growing my tool. Without that knowledge - what could I possibly tweet about that would attract marketers (who I'm selling to)?