Nobody cares about your story #BuildInPublic

So I'm going to both agree and disagree. I agree that building in public is played out. @levelsio and a few others got a lot of profitable attention for being purple cows, but now that everyone's a purple cow the purpleness is no longer remarkable.

That being said, I think this is the only problem with building in public. In principle, if someone could figure out a novel and effective way to do it, I'd take my hat off to them.

For example, I don't agree with this:

You are not the hero of the story… Donald Miller makes a strong case for dropping the idea that you — the business owner, the developer, the creator — are the hero of the story.

I'm a big Donald Miller fan, but this is plainly not true. I mean, Miller himself is very much the hero of his own story, and that's probably the only reason any of us know about him. His memoir Blue Like Jazz — a story about his personal struggles with religion — is what put him on the map. And the subtitle of his follow-up book A million Miles in a Thousand Years is, tellingly, "How I Learned to Live a Better Story."

These books gave Miller a platform. And from this platform he's able to sell courses, services, and books like Building a StoryBrand.

Here's my point: it's probably effective to build your personal brand if your audience/customers aspire to match some of your achievements. This clearly doesn't apply to all entrepreneurs. But it probably does apply to a lot of entrepreneurs who are selling products to other entrepreneurs.

It's not about bravery or inspiration, building in public comes from lack of marketing budget.

I not only disagree, but I also find this post toxic to people (especially the younger ones) who are genuinely interested in building in public but see a +27 upvoted top discussion on one of their favorite platforms telling them this;

| Nobody cares about your story. Nobody cares how hard you're working. Nobody cares how brave you are. They care about what you can do for them.

What the flying F are we doing? 🤦‍♂️

Building in public is not about "stroking your own ego," "lack of marketing budget," "padding yourself on the back," or "self-esteem."

It can be many things, but it's a great way to learn, network, and get yourself out there.

Showing up consistently in front of an "audience," pushing and optimizing content, getting feedback early from peers, connecting with those peers, and even reaching your first couple of customers.

This post seems to be purposely spreading a radical opinion.

For building in public, in essence it all comes down to two things:

• the product/service you are building
• the resources you have for building the product/service

If your target customer's are likely to follow your road building in public, then it's a valuable tool to connect with them, get feedback and build long-lasting customer relationships.

If you have little resources, it can be a valuable marketing tool as building in public can drive organic content production around your product.

The bottom line is: Don't listen to opinion makers, assess its value for yourself.

Building in public is just one of the many ways you can use to share and showcase your work as soon as possible.

This has some benefits. The #BuildInPublic community on Twitter is supportive. They'll want to celebrate your wins, share and like your progress. You'll get a few trials and comments from them. They might point you towards potential customers or help you with some stuff.

If your target customer also happens to be the Indie Hackers or #BuildInPublic crowd, you get free marketing as well.

Also, never forget that entrepreneurs live and die by their network. Without a network, you miss on opportunities, support and help to extend your reach. The #BuildInPublic is a network of like-minded people that can help and support you. But you also get to help them.

The indiehackers forum is another community where you can get and give support.

There are thousands of others as well.

#BuildInPublic is not about your story. It is not about marketing. It is about connecting with like-minded people.

I'm not sure I get who this post is supposed to be speaking to. How many people are out there building in public because they think people will look at their posts and think that they're... being a hero? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the impression that this is a problem that actually exists.

Yes, you won't be sticking your head above the cornfield just because you build in public, any more.

Given that fact, I don't see any reason to NOT build in public.

The advantages that it gives any developer who is creating something:

• Get your story out, and collect followers of like-minded and/or interested people
• You will get SEO traffic, if you share on HN, IH, Reddit and/or other platforms this will get people in your direction
• Document your path with information and details for yourself and others. Info that might matter for your next venture.
• When sharing your story, you get (unsolicited) feedback from people, which can help you to get objective insights, alternative routes and/or new ideas that'll help you
• Dismantle the survivor bias; by telling both the ups and downs, you will show and inspire others by showing what entrepreneurship for makers really looks like
• By showing others how someone in a similar situation (single, family man, working besides day job / full-time on own projects, etc...) is working on your product might inspire and/or show what's possible. This is one of the reasons why IH is so popular, I think. (Am i right @csallen?)

Yes, it takes time to document your path. But all the benefits that I mentioned (there are more, for sure) make it worthwhile.

Perhaps it's not the building in public that's done for, but only the original expectation of being original by doing so.

Code Hard, Ship Harder 🔥

#valuefirst #shipharder

Sounds like you had a bad experience, maybe because of wrong expectations.

For me, building in public helps mostly with motivating myself to succeed.
People in my industry are interested to know how things are going, I know cause I am in others who build in public, and because of the reactions to what I write.

The success of building in public isn't measured by social media engagement, but by how much it helps you to grow your business.

Agreed. Everyone has a side hustle/startup these days. This comes back to the fundamental rule of building a business that solves a real problem. If you're building it for any other reason than bettering or relieving the user's journey, why would people use your solution?

You should be closer to your customers. And growing the product together with them makes both of you happier and more precise with the features. Building in public is a great way to communicate and share the real reasons under "this and that", "what and why" in your product

I don't know if it's that binary.

Plenty of hashtags are used simply because it's the mechanism for garnering viewers on social platforms.

This appears to be one of them.

Sure, some people are just showing off, some use it for accountability and to get feedback. But I wouldn't draw a line in the sand calling the hashtag complete bullshit 😂

With respect to the Donald Miller point, one of the core facets of being the guide is demonstrating authority and empathizing with the hero.

Showing the process of how the product is built, generating an origin story, and adhering to the trend of transparency (as you also pointed out) all help establish someone, especially an indie-hacker, bootstrapper type, as a trusted guide.

Lastly, if you're a maker generating content and marketing yourself, I don't see a better way of having a steady flow of content other than showing what you're working on.

Ohhhh hot take. I love it. But I do disagree.

As a former demand gen marketer and now a SaaS founder, I’ve found that turning someone internal into an evangelist and having them share raw, relatable, and empathetic content can make your brand more human.

Maybe it depends on the audience your product serves, but I definitely think there’s still space for it.

Maybe not in the traditional - show revenue/customer # WoW or MoM, but individuals do still matter, especially for early stage companies.

The statement is not correct 100%.

It might be to some extent. People do care about stories. Stories have been a great tool to create awareness about anything since the stone age I would say.

Personal stories have even more impact. For e.g., If you are the topper of your class then you are a hero for your class and teachers but not for another school maybe.

therefore, the impact of personal stories depends on the person you are telling the story about as well. The whole country would love to hear the story about his Prime minister.

Conclusion is increase your reach to increase the impact of your personal story. And your story will help you to increase your reach. So it's a kind of a cycle that we need to consistently work on.

With mimetic theory, I believe most people who see others succeeding by building in public just imitate in hope of getting to their destination faster. It works because trying in public brings much more serendipity than building in private.

I fully believe in radical transparency. It's served me well in life and IHing.

Like everything in life, your intentions matter. If you're building in public because someone else had success with it, you're destined to fail. If you're building in public for the sake of yourself or your people, you're more inclined to succeed.

Thanks for the interesting read, @michaelforrest and congrats on a quality topic hook; this one clearly struck a nerve... A timely reminder that how we promote largely dictates the success (or failure) of what we're promoting.

A more appropriate headline should be "Nobody cares about your story if you don't know how to tell one".

Building in public shouldn't be - and was never meant to be - a replacement for "if you build it, they will come."

I think that what makes us human is connecting to stories. So yes! I think that people care.

Thought provoking post @michaelforrest! My two cents; it all comes down to getting clear on purpose, vision and KPIs. If you're building in public and then bummed when you don't see x,y,z outcome manifest the first consideration should be whether you were clear on why you were using this tool in the first place and if those expectations were realistic. A significant number of the comments on this thread seem to infer that the only KPI (they have associated) with building in public is to generate sales leads - not to say that this outcome is impossible, but it's a bit like running Google Display Ads and expecting to see great site engagement from directly attributable web traffic; possible? Yes. Likely? Hells no.

I'm playing around with some ways to show my work and build in public - one is this. Rather than advertise the thing I'm building - talk about how founders can learn about the process of building

I recorded a couple of videos of the app-building process and wrote about what founders can learn from it on LinkedIn

This one is on getting back into your craft
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexsalinsky_you-ever-feel-like-you-need-to-get-activity-6911668689993887744-nGoH?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

This one on a simple way to build mockups
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexsalinsky_that-feeling-when-youre-a-non-technical-activity-6914219822889254913-2h5C?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

The same applies to copywriting, and all kinds of marketing output in general. Focus on the customer. Relentlessly.

What do they get? Why is that valuable? etc. etc.

Yeaah I've gotten tons of help and support by talking about what I'm building. I try to avoid the linkedin cringe posting you see all over - just calling out where my challenges are, and in more situations than 1 I've received messages from people in my network who were in a position to provide valuable advice or actually help support me in the area I was stuck.

Without being public about the project, this couldn't happen

I much rather hear about unique problems and how the person overcame them (so I can learn from it) than sales reports. Well written!

Agree that if you're building in public for the external validation, to be a "hero", you might be wasting your time because that's a poor way to live.

Disagree that it's nobody cares about building in public. I don't think stories ever go out of style. And those who are at a similar stage as you, or just a few steps behind, are always seeking stories to help them keep going. I do. If nobody cares, perhaps it's the storytelling style that needs to change, not stopping entirely.

I like the conclusion here. It doesn't take much, but opens up opportunities.

When everyone zigs, you zag.

Totally agree. If building in public helps you, do it.

Interesting to think of the hero analogy here:

"Your customers are the hero of the story, you are their guide."

What are heroes? They are saviors, protectors, and helpers; they act against injustice or on behalf of the vulnerable. Is their problem, their company, their life the thing(s) being saved?

In any case, the posturing within a personal story is vanity and ego. I think there's some legit value in creating relationships with people that resonate with a story. We've all to some extent bought into that "story" to be an indie hacker.

The story we believe here is that autonomy and making money is great. As a result, we seek out those that confirm that story for us.

Great post — enjoying this conversation.

I think there's a separation of concepts here that might be valuable: Building in Public and Building a Personal Brand.

Personally, as a person building a startup for the first time, there's a ton to learn from those Building in Public. I have invested countless hours into consuming pretty much everything Nathan Barry (ConvertKit) has put out, for example. Building in Public gives me tactics and ideas I can try when I'm stuck. So I applaud and welcome those that are Building in Public - it's an immense source of learning for me, and I'm sure for others.

I feel more ambiguous about the personal brand side of things. It works well (really well) for some and that's great. I don't think it's as much of a fit for me, because of my personality, but also for some of the reasons you outline - putting the customers and the problem at the heart of the story. There's also a homogeneity that seems to happen with personal brand building. One playbook works, that person packages and sells the playbook, and then there are thousands using the same playbook, building variants of the same productized brand.

I think there's a place for all of the above, or one or the other, or none, depending on what you're doing, who you are, and what's meaningful to you personally.

I think you're being assumptive and generalizing too much.

Like anything, execution plays a big part. So yes, it's easy to ignore when it's just another of the same old story. But when done well, it can engage people. The key is in the value it brings to the reader. If he can relate and improve his own efforts, of course he will care about it.

I don't think of building in public as trying to be the hero of the story. I view it as an extended case study. The lessons, both of successes and failures, are more of the focus than the business or founder.

I also think building in public has benefits beyond trying to promote a business or build a following. Sharing your efforts publicly on a regular basis can help motivate makers to consistently stay on top of tasks, especially ones that are less enjoyable. It holds them accountable.

i disagree, a lot of people enjoy it

Yeah I agree with this. It only helps if the customer you are targeting is interested in the building of the product or is interested in building something similar. It might help in a little traffic of curious people but there is a little chance you will get paying customers from it.

I agree. The story does help, though. Not so much from a heroic perspective, but from an empathetic perspective. People don't only want to see the product building process, but also how you're doing it. Anecdotes help people learn and feel inspired. Sometimes they aren't even interested in the product one is offering, but learn from others and apply them to their personal lives.

I've been building in public in IH and Twitter for the last 14 weeks and launched the alpha version on 31st March 2022. at vadelabs.

It's a no-code platform for API integrations. We have started with some of the most popular integrations like Github, Twitter etc. and would add more custom integrations going forth.

Building in Public has helped us inculcate a discipline which had helped us land our first customer recently. It also motivates us in our journey maintaining the consistency and has helped us get feedback too.

Actually I posted about my progress on Chatrabot which is a bit more than an MVP and everyone cared and everyone now loves me.

I think Building in Public shows dedication to what you are working on and shows you are not a random person in a way that inspires trust. It's also a simple way of interacting with others here (whether fellow entrepreneurs or customers).

For example: the way people view someone who pops ups up and says "I have this great new product" and you check their profile that is 3 hours old is different than someone you see have been working on something since a while.

It's a case of random person vs experienced and known person.

This is always a great debate and I love seeing so many of the comments sharing different perspectives! :)

There are always the internal and external benefits of Building in Public. A builder has to balance both: for internal accountability and reflection and for external marketing.

If you skew too much towards the internal, you're very much in your own bubble. If you skew too much towards the external, you're just a self-centered person trying to get attention.

And most people only have time & attention to work on their own things, so yes, it is important to share it from the lens of the readers but use your own experiences to tell the stories. It is very much like how a good book should be!

Couldn't disagree more.

First of all how you have put the words in reader's mouth by stating building in pubic is for any of the reasons you mentioned.

Secondly time changes but it doesn't necessarily change every aspect of running a business.

Building in public has multiple reasons (which IMO none of them include what you said), such as:

• validating micro-plans
• building relationships and growing your personal network
• building a personal brand and/or business brand
• raising awareness about the product/service
• reaching to new audience
• standing out from the crowd/competition

You mentioned people care about what you can do for them as if it's something new, but isn't that the reason you start working on your idea at first place?

To your surprise, even 10000 years ago we'd trade my "Wheat" with your "Meat" if I needed meat and you needed wheat!

What's the alternative? Building in darkness?

Even AWS builds in public, and everyone reveals as much of the business process and details as they want.

Finally let's not forget about the most successful person in building in public, which happens to be the world's richest man, Elon Musk!

I love this hashtag!

That is a good take. However, I see a lot of great projects being built in public and being able to iterate faster.

In my opinion, building in public does more for the product than it does for the developers' "hero" status, and here's a few reasons why:

• It helps gain a small following who are genuinely interested in what you are creating. Sometimes this (in)validates the need for the product right away.

• If you do manage to get a few followers, they are generally happy to get early access to alpha/beta features and can start using the product in it's infancy.

• Now that you have users on your (rough) product, you will probably receive quite a bit of early feedback. This feedback is vital and helps you make decisions early into the project.

• These decisions allow you to be agile, build iteratively and continue to deliver value

There's probably quite a few more, but these are the main ones that come to mind. I followed this approach with https://interactlist.com and currently have 100+ users awaiting beta

Definitely, I think if you are successful at this people do gravitate toward a success story, but sharing early building info is no longer unique.

I think building in the open and getting feedback is still a generally good practice for getting feedback super early.

If you're just doing it in the hope somebody will think "wow, what a hero" then you're wasting your time.

Agreed, not sure who the f*** is thinking this way, but I think they were doomed to fail regardless.

Building in public is an excuse to market your product... 95% of the cases.

I still think that it is highly contextual and I've seen it work for those starting from scratch.

If you're selling to a market of founders & businesses, then building in public on twitter is really helpful. It builds trust & credibility.

Founders talking about their product & being transparent might make a compelling factor for preferring this product over competition as we subconsciously perceive the product to offer support.

But only sharing plain data is not going to help as everyone can do the same. Telling how they came up with the product and sharing their personal struggles as they build the business definitely builds a brand for the founder