Why building an audience first might be bad advice for you

I don't personally read it as 'the' only way. The tweet does mention 'a' three step process.

There are different ways to build an audience. I did it by building a community (Ministry of Testing), focusing on others to bring in the expertise. It worked for me, maybe more people will catch on to this.

I learned some key things that did me well from the experience:

• I cared and knew enough about testing to try to create change
• I learned how to build a business
• I was speaking to testers every single day before I launched any product
• I used by learnings from the conversations I had with the community to launch something I believe was a good fit
• I built real skills in building a community and a profitable business
• I transferred my skills over to other/new things

The real value, I feel, for building an audience is that you end up speaking/chatting/communicating to people every day. The value of that is vastly under rated.

There are some things that I 'just know' are the right thing to do because I've spent the time over so many years interacting with people. This has been the hardest part of separating myself from Ministry of Testing.

I think the more general advice is something like: build interest first than the product. Building an audience is one, but not the only way to make interest, as you pointed out well. Creating a landing page for validation, running the crowdfunding campaign, talking with potential clients or your network f2f, etc., are all excellent ways to do so. Event sometimes, your personal interest qualifies. It boils down to risk management. Starting with nothing, no interest or audience or validation is a higher risk than starting with the audience and realizing that you built a wrong one.

This is a solid article, thanks for writing it. Your strongest point is that the "audience first, product second" strategy is best suited for info products. I agree! If someone isn't creating an info product, maybe building an audience first isn't their best path.

There are also some benefits to trying to build an audience that are independent of the product entirely. I'm thinking about improving your communication skills and increasing your opportunity for connecting with like-minded people. Trying to build an audience is going to require someone to constantly communicate their ideas, often through writing. This is an invaluable skill regardless of market/domain/product. Similarly, getting in touch with people on a similar wavelength can be a massive force multiplier. Who knows, you might meet a future co-founder that way!

I wouldn't take such advice too seriously. However, I could imagine if you would followed his advice, even just ina half-baken way, it could give you valuable insights before building any product.

Imagine you wanted to build a new CRM for dogwalkers (just a stupid example): You don't need to build tons of social profiles/feeds or whatever. Just a landing page with a name ("Doggi Doggo"), a punchline ("Manage all your dogs from your phone") and a CTA ("Get notified when we launch"). Post this to few destinations. If you are not able to get any sign-ups, you saved TONS OF TIME. If you get some traction you are motivated to continue.

This is gold, thanks so much. I love his you present viable alternatives too. I couldn't agree more and glad this came along as I'm about to embark on a be project and have been thinking about this a lot. Thanks!