Why Build In Public Will Doom Your Startup To Failure

The number one reason that 90% of all startups (indiehacker side projects & full-time bootstrapped or funded) fail is that:

They don't find breakthrough growth.

They never get to the point where growth comes easy and revenue and customers come flooding into the business.

Instead, they get forever stuck in this phase where growth is hard and slow and their startup doesn't make enough money to cover the founder(s) living & business costs.

Eventually, one of two things happens:

1. The founder runs out of money and is forced to shutdown

2. They give up thinking that the project won't work out

How Is This The Fault Of #buildinpublic?

Because it leads founders to make the two mistakes that stop 90% of them from finding breakthrough growth.

1. Spending too much time building and not enough time marketing

Although #buildinpublic makes founders feel like they are marketing, they really aren't. It's just an excuse that allows them to spend the vast majority of their time doing what they love (working on their project) and not enough time doing what they don't like but will actually grow their business (marketing).

This feeling is bolstered by the fact that they get likes, comments, and retweets from other founders and friends that support them. This gives them a big jolt of dopamine but at the end of the day it doesn't bring in revenue and customers (or not nearly enough to support them).

2. Selling only their product

#Buildinpublic ensures that the only marketing that you do is based solely on your product.

In other words, with #buildinpublic, the only thing that your marketing sells is your product.

And selling your product is a VERY ineffective way to grow any business (its what bought Apple to the brink of bankruptcy in 1997 - not my opinion but Steve Job's).

Why?

Because less than 2% of your target market is actively looking to buy right now.
These people/businesses are the only ones who will a) pay attention to your marketing about your product and b) buy it.

The remaining 98% will ignore your message.

Because they aren't looking to buy your product right now, trying to sell your product to them upfront will trigger loss aversion in them (a cognitive bias that motivates us to avoid loss more than go after gains) and they will ignore your marketing message.

But Why Not Just Target The 2%?

You might think "but why not just target those actively looking to buy".

But this is a BAD strategy.

1. They are incredibly difficult to find (they aren't a static group)

2. They are expensive to reach - the only way to accurately find them is to advertise or do huge amounts of SEO to get on the front page for buying keywords

3. Even if you do find them, you're competing with EVERYONE else in your market. It becomes a game of "oh pick me instead of them please". Your chances of getting the customer shrink with every new competitor that joins your market (and every category is exploding with competition).

4. Finally there just aren't enough of them to go around.

To Find Breakthrough Growth You NEED To Sell To The 98%

1. They are easy to find (they are everyone in your target market).

2. They are cheap to reach (social media, direct cold outreach etc.)

3. Your competition is not targeting them (as they are too busy selling their products to the 2%).

4. There are plenty of them to go around (and growing by the day).

But how exactly do you capture the attention of those not looking to buy what you sell and convince them that they need to buy NOW?

Well, you use a marketing strategy that is extremely effective at doing just that.

It's the strategy that:

• Saved Apple from the brink of bankruptcy
• Turned one-man solo side-project Bullet Journal into an $8 million-a-year lifestyle business
• Grew HubSpot from a scrappy startup into an industry giant
• Turned a husband and wife startup with an excel spreadsheet product into a thriving SaaS business called YNAB.
• Made CrossFit a global phenomenon.
• And more

To read about this strategy check out the full article right here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-build-public-doom-your-startup-failure-chris-monk