When do you start building your audience?

Start building an audience on Day 0. A lot of people will buy your product just because they like you. Of course, you should work on both in tandem, but who are you making the product for if nobody is there to use it?

Both of them should go concurrently. I've been building in public in IH and Twitter for the last 18 weeks and launched the alpha version in March 2022. at vadelabs.

Building in Public has helped us inculcate a discipline that recently helped us land our first customer. It also motivates us in our journey to maintain consistency and has helped us get feedback.

I just finished reading The Minimalist Entrepreneur and would argue that Sahil (author, found of GumRoad) takes the side of B. The whole idea is that you should be focusing on solving the problems for a community that you care about, and only after servicing the community should you focus on building a business. So no the exact wording as stated, but by servicing the community, you will gain the trust of the community and build up a reputation for solving problems. That then allows you to have an appreciation for problems that need to be solved and how to go about building a product to do so - all with valuable community input every step of the way.

The hardest thing for all of to understand is - Build the audience from day one

That's a good question!

Always B. Success must be such a struggle without it.

Its largely to combat A happening that we have started Oxogen.io to help people understand the importance of their audience and support them through that journey.

In my opinion, both can work. The strategy shouldn't be limited to A or B. It should be considered based on a few factors - do you have a seed fund for customer feedback or acquisition? Do you have the capability to quickly boost up an MVP? What stages is your product? What is your business model? e.g. for some B2B software, direct sales is the most important funnel to acquire customers.