Does “building in public” work?
laike9m.com
laike9m.com
What I mean by this is, if you’re building in public there’s a 99% chance you’re going to end up building products for other indiehackers who are interested in following people who build in public.
This means you’re probably going to end up building yet another micro-Saas dev tool (Saas boilerplate, incident monitoring, etc) or growth hacking tool (for social media, SEO, cold email, AI content, etc).
And you’ll probably get modest success fast, since indiehackers like tools that help them indiehack and if they follow you on social media to hear stories of how they can get rich quick, they’ll definitely buy a product from you promising to help them do that.
However, I think you’ll struggle to ever “cross the chasm” so to speak into building a company that’s bigger than whatever online personality you build (no mass markets or low churn businesses without pyramid scheme dynamics).
The World Of DaaS by Auren Hoffman has some decent episodes. These tend to be interviews with more established entrepreneurs but lots of bootstrapping/ early growth stories from devs/teams when they were much smaller.
Sounds a bit like a variation on Conway's Law.
There are some proverbs, because it's a very old observation. But there must be named laws too, because it's a very common observation.
> There must be some named law that states that the set of people you listen determine most of your thoughts. But it's something way wider in scope than Conway's Law.
A related term is "audience capture". When you do things based on the approval of your followers, you can end up catering to some weird niches.
> If you’ve ever wondered why so much of the creator economy looks like a pyramid scheme—with course creators who teach other creators how to sell courses to creators who eventually sell their own courses on course creation to other unsuspecting creators—mimesis is at the heart of the matter.
From his article: The Ungated Manifesto: The Pattern, and the Battle for the Soul of the Internet.
Every new startup needs to navigate the transition from early adopters to bigger names and/or more mainstream users who give you credibility and higher revenue potential. But it’s almost always done as a stepping stone approach. You need to get the early adopters first or else none of the rest matters.
Doing this is not easy so any conceivable advantage is worth considering. Of course targeting build in public and indiehackers are not the only possible strategies for getting early users, but if it’s working for you, don’t underestimate how valuable that is.
Of course I do agree about going into it with both eyes open and knowing that if you’re successful enough, you will likely have to evolve somehow toward another customer segment. But again, this is almost always the case no matter what your early adopter channels are.
If we take B2B products for example, it's super common to niche down into a specific industry and then expand out to adjacent ones, and so on.
But the build-in-public industry/niche is unique in that those customers aren't "real" businesses with "real" problems. Most of the followers are wantreprenuers with imagined problems.
So the risk is, instead of building a solid foundation to expand from, you might just be building the wrong thing altogether and doing it on quicksand (those pyramid scheme dynamics I was talking about).
Unfortunately as you point out, while that can work to a limited degree, it will usually cap off pretty quickly. Gotta market to customers, not other creators.
You really want to be known as an 'authority' in your area of choice and have your product in front of as many people in its target audience as possible, so people trust you know what you're doing and take you seriously.
That said, the bigger risk is building products for hobbyists/students/tourists because it won't have the ability to "cross the chasm" as you put it. At least with the hacker scene you have a few legit people to drive development forward.
Selling stuff and growing is hard.
If you build a product for indiehackers, you’ll never be able to sell it beyond that initial target market.
I feel like that’s a bit like saying a Social Media platform built for college students won’t never go mainstream.
So I’m wondering: is there any product that started as indiehacker product and eventually ended up becoming a mass market product?
The biggest problem is when the game leaves the cradle of a gamedev community that is nice to beginners and is thrown into the wilderness of actual gamers that don't know how much effort it takes to make a game and don't really care. They won't mince words.
I suppose it's just a common class of error to not think beforehand what your end game strategy is going to be? Step 1: make thing. Step 2: ?. Step 3: profit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
Book by Geoffrey Moore.
quoted a lot by startups for a couple of decades plus.
had read it some years ago. quite interesting ...
I've seen so many indie hacker types who are allergic to talking to (would-be) customers, seeking validation exclusively from other indie hackers, who would never be customers.
Saw a tweet the other day of someone saying "to find a good business idea, first tweet about it and see if it gets love."
1) what
Every time I dip my toes into indiehacker communities it's this all the way down: Indie hackers building personal brands to sell products to other indie hackers via their Twitter or TikTok.
If instead you're building, e.g., construction software, then it makes sense to be public to the construction space and build excitement there. But everyone's "public" is where developers congregate, leading to building just for that crowd instead.
I'd prefer a legion of small businesses that generate great wealth for the people around them, than a single, venture funded, loss making, mega-corp concentrated in SF.
I await your downvotes :)
Good things. It does bring customers directly. At least for blogging, building in public posts can get some backlinks, which is great for SEO. For some time I had the #1 result for my top search term. That might make it worth it overall.
Negative things. It motivates others to clone your project, as now people know that $X/month can be made doing that. Almost no-one will, but if your posts are seen by say 100k+ people then you'll have a few in there who might.
It warps your own thinking, as now you have a bunch of people on social media who see your project as your identity. You start buying into the narrative of being this X project guy so you can't just go away to do Y, even if on a rational level you know no-one actually cares that much whether you do X or Y.
Seems @levelsio has been immune to this, as he's been smart to have his identity be a guy who ships a variety of things quickly vs. just being say the "Nomadlist Guy" forever.
and the guy ships like a machine good lord
"just code more carefully" jesus
his products being genai wrappers, some are partly yes.
in his interview with lex fridman he explains how he built his recent photo ai one, yes most of it is wrapper on some ai service, but his team goes the extra mile of training models on their own so it looks more photorealistic than the generally available ones
he built products before ai like nomadlist and remoteok.
his hit and miss rates are as real as it gets
Adding a “comic book” style in “4 minutes”: https://x.com/levelsio/status/1836735235658072144
If all you need to do to ship a new feature is add a prompt option in a configuration somewhere, yeah you can ship fast. And, again, all the props for making something that can iterate like that!
I think what I wanted to but failed to convey by being pithy is: For the people out there comparing themselves and think they’re “slow”, they might be trying to solve a problem that can’t be solved with a configuration tweak. It’s ok that it takes more time then.
I do work with the garage door open though. I share screenshots, ask for feedback, and show off the little details I spent a lot of time on. It’s basically a DVD commentary for the stuff I am about to release
This attracts the right kind of people, and sparks the right kinds of conversations. I am basically involving fellow builders in my design process, and hyping what I am working on to my audience and industry peers. It is a good way to make friends.
This focus on finance is distasteful to me. Not in the "it's a taboo subject" sense, but it just feels like focusing on the wrong thing.
I really like your phrase, "work with the garage door open".
So instead they make up shaky heuristics, see reviews and wishlists and must think "wow that game made a lot of money"... missing important context on how much was spent on labor/profit splits, or the area the team is in. Which muddies discussion on what a "successful" game even is (a topic already muddy even with all context).
BUT, then again the tides have shifted so much in that people just take a "should have" approach. "you shouldn't have done it in X genre. You shouldn't have used Y software. Your game sucks so it obviously failed". So maybe bringing up any finances will always attract that crowd, not cause them to look into another place to make money.
The stuff in the OP is mainly just marketing/trends driven by social media platforms which has grown under the brand of "building in public".
"Working with the garage door open" is a great phrase.
I, also, discovered build-in-public and indie hackers communities about 6-8 months ago, after I failed at "build it, and they will come". Since then, I have revived my Twitter/Mastodon/LinkedIn, followed some people with similar goals, and shared my progress.
Eventually, I have realized that like any community, most people are not willing to do the job and would rather flood the internet with low quality questions like "what payment provider should I chose". People would glorify the "build 432 in 12 months, and see what sticks" approach, thus making their content repetitive ("hey, just launched Y on PH, support my launch!!").
And even the "big players", like levelsio, would post irrelevant stuff such as criticism of EU. Sure, everyone can post what they want, but my desire was to follow people who are smarter, and more successful than me, in order to learn from them, and not be involved in politics. After ~8 months of being there (there = Twitter) on a daily basis -- I quit cold turkey. It's not worth it.
I shared some of my thoughts in my (other) blog [0].
[0] https://thesolopreneur.blog/posts/on-buildinpublic-and-indie...
I actually enjoy reading levelsio's non-indie-related posts, but that 's me personally.
I also like his tweets, but it has nothing to do with learning how to build a business.
Also I should add there are a lot of young posters who are, and I won’t sugarcoat it, hopelessly naive at times - certainly saying shit I’d never think about saying when I was their age, so with that we are on a treadmill of constantly seeing, mocking, relearning etc past mistakes.
>there are a lot of young posters who are, and I won’t sugarcoat it, hopelessly naive at times
I don't mind those people. No one really wants to mentor these days, but people LOVE to correct. I'd treat that incoming flaming as an opportunity to learn from people who'd never speak up otherwise (after inevitably discarding 80% of replies that are simply non-constructive insults).
Your post reminded me of that “ten thousand” xkcd about how mathematically not “everyone knows” something that feels like everybody should know. Not even close.
You said “treadmill of mistakes”… well there are a lot of people and eventually they all become one of the “lucky ten thousand”. I wonder if your frustration is watching yet another batch of 10,000 learn those “same mistakes”.
I dunno, it feels like a less cynical interpretation to me.
If you want to make money from a good product then becoming a social media influencer who talks about your product is the most straightforward way to advertise without having to pay for ads.
It also set forth a very straightforward "success" path: make good software that the community praises and tech companies (who probably also use your code) will climb over each other to get you on their team. But I suppose those days are slowly ending as well now that many problems (for all but the biggest tech companies) are being solved. No need for a million dollar mastermind when a 100k mid-level can do the job.
Other people have done a lot to help at their own initiative though. Resellers approach me and market it themselves, customers recommend it on forums, researchers mention it in their published papers, and one customer even wrote a chapter of a book about it - which was key to being eligible for a Wikipedia page.
I'm lucky though because it belongs to a slow moving, well-defined class of products that people in my target industry already understand so when they go looking for a cheaper alternative to the super-priced big names, they find mine. I'm not inventing a new market.
It's not free money though. It's very code-heavy and technical-understanding-heavy and I've spent nearly 20 years actively developing it by now. One man wouldn't be able to just smash one out in a year, and you'd need some reasonably deep domain knowledge.
This reminds me of the time Citi lost $900 million due to terrible software [0].
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-17/citi-c...
Marketing a product seems easier than ever with social media, however the ocean is much larger.
Moreover the author could have easily written this post as "it's time to rethink 'thoughtleader blogging' and it would fit just as well. Most people don't write this stuff for their own pleasure, they write it for eyeballs. They write it for their readers. In that sense I suspect building in public works as well as blog posts like this for gaining a following. There's no one fits all answer to this.
There is way too much stuff about all the meta around making projects and just plain clout chasing rather than sharing intellectually interesting projects. I had twitter for an hour before I deleted it because I realized it was just a big popularity contest. The SNR was just too low.
I still think "building in public" is a good thing apart from the buzzword-y semantics it has taken on. The best way to do this is to talk only about the project and the technical challenges it has, and view "building in public" as a moral commitment rather than a marketing one. Perhaps "moral" is too strong a word. I really mean sharing things, not to boost your ego or flex status, but because you think it's actually cool/useful.
So you run into all the issues non-native ads have: you become noise and the act of talking about your product is a nuisance rather than one to build curiosity. Even for completely free games, sadly (you can thank mobile for that). the huge majority of nobody really cares about you until they do.
And tbf I get it: at least in a hacker scene you're usually trying to perform something somewhat novel and that brings in curious hackers. Games (especially indies as a business) rarely have any novel tech, especially since so many of them rely on the tech of a large engine to do the heavy lifting for you.
When you are just launching your product, it's really difficult to get those first users and any awareness at all.
If your target audience includes other people in tech, then building in public can be great marketing channel.
Posting about your ideas or your product just isn't that interesting. Posting how much money you're making is very interesting to other people who might want to follow your path.
Like all successful marketing channels, this channel is a lot more saturated these days than when we started (~2017), so it might not work as well anymore.
On the contrary, I wouldn’t be using Capacities if they didn’t have their entire development roadmap on your product, so thanks
> Posting about your ideas or your product just isn't that interesting. Posting how much money you're making is very interesting to other people who might want to follow your path.
Hang on, it feels like there's a contradiction here. Is the audience customers, or is it people who want to follow your path? Or are you thinking that's substantially the same audience?
We are a Canny customer since the early days <3. And I feel that both product and financial information is interesting. I'm a user of your product, so how it works and how you think about it are significant to me as they'll affect my day to day life. But on the other hand, financial information is something that gives me confidence in you as a business. Both can create a sense of emotional investment beyond the transactional relationship we have.
But we're just a regular old software business, not indie hackers and nor does "building in public" describe how we work.
It's more like open sourcing your code. On one hand: yes, it's good marketing. On the other hand: you're creating positive externality, so random people show up, thank you for your contribution, and help you, monetarily, or by giving you valuable leads & feedback.
it's the same benefit of going to a conference & networking, just doing it continually. It's still useful even if everyone is doing it, because when someone stumbles on your work, they have an entry point/signal on whether there's mutual benefit in collaborating.
I'd kill for some local meetup spot to have already done all this for me, but this is the next best approach.
I think a lot of people (myself included, to some extent) thought Apple would lose its way (again) after Jobs died. It's a testament to the company he (re-)built and the culture and mindset he curated that it's still doing well.
Bankman-Fried, meanwhile, built a whole lot of nothing, and had no integrity.
While transparency can be valuable, I agree that many are overdoing it, especially with revenue posts. It often feels like peacocking rather than genuine sharing of insights.
I think the key is to focus on providing actual value to your audience. Instead of just posting numbers, share the strategies that led to those numbers, or the challenges you faced along the way. That's much more useful for other founders.
I made an intro post and started to setup a profile. On the profile page it says: "Create a founder profile to show off your products, your revenue, and your most ambitious goals and ideas" ... and that's when I realised this wasn't what I wanted. I'm not a founder; I don't have a product to sell. Everybody on the site is shouting about how many customers they've got and how they've cleared their first $100k - but I couldn't see anyone keen to discuss the intricacies of coding up a 2d canvas filter.
So my library still doesn't have a community of people who want to discuss all things 2D canvas. It would be nice if I could find such a community (not on Reddit), or build one, but I'm glad I decided not to hustle with all the rest of the indie hacker crowd building stuff in public.
I’d like to have heard some perspective from people actively participating in this and how their experiences have been
References, spreadsheets, scheduling, analytics, sourcing, markets, targeting, timing optimization, drafting, research, etc.
It gave me a lot more appreciation for the people who grow a large audience in this sort of manner, but also made it clear that it’s not for me. There isn’t enough time in the day for me to build the products I want to, I’ll just have to settle for posting randomly whatever I feel like.
PS:, recently there seems to have been some changes to the x algorithm. Just spontaneously posting and even shitposting seems to be doing a lot better than the formulaic stuff from a few years ago. YMMV
It's not interesting, engaging, or educational. So as an growth strategy, it sharply slumps off after the initial launch post, and there's zero value to the reader aside from knowing it exists (again, initial launch post).
So it's a call to arms to reevaluate what you're doing. If you're posting number goes up, it's really no different from building in private, it's likely a wasted effort on your part and unnecessary noise to the community. Or maybe return to the old meaning of building in public. Create value for people, actually have a dialogue, and that'll pay dividends (that's the hope anyways) .
Some share numbers, some don’t. Some share everything, some goes with outlines. Some… you get the idea.
I do it because it’s boring to build alone, month after month, year after year. I’ve joined the community 2 years ago and couldn’t be happier.
1. Being a hacker means walking the world being constantly dissatisfied by all of the inefficiency you see on a daily basis and wanting to fix it.
2. Being a hacker means feeling like most of the software world is fraudulent and you are going to build a solution that actually works.
3. Being a hacker means building something because it is fun or cool.
Making money is a side effect of doing what you would do naturally because if you didn’t you would lose self respect.
Money often comes as a side effect but not the motivation that drives you to build in the first place.
The thing that keeps you in the door and makes usage grow is the quality of life. Especially in the business world, most software is terrible. If people like using your software, they will tell others about it and they will be more accepting when things inevitably go wrong. The ease of use of our software and the immediate service we provide when customers ask for help are time and again the things they say keep them using our tools. With good support, even a frustrated bug report can turn into a happy experience.
But in most cases you don't see quality of life improvements unless you also get users.
In other words building it is not enough. Lives need to use it to be improved.
Monetizing an app forces you to concentrate on articulating that value. It frees up resources (ie money) to spend on spreading the word. It offers you feedback on whether this is a meaningful use of your time or not.
Dont get me wrong. An app can add value to a single person. You can give it away for free. There's nothing wrong with that.
I labor in this industry because I enjoy the work and it pays better than anything else I could do, and I try to work for companies doing good things, but I have some misgivings about seeing unpaid open source work in the same light as volunteering. To be clear, as an engineer who benefits I'm grateful, but I'd rather developers were compensated fairly.
EDIT: given the down votes, let me pose it as a question--Is software obviously a public good? Are we actually making things better on balance?
Meaning that if you solve valuable problems you will [probably] make money. So spend all your time solving valuable problems not posting about $$
But posting about all the money you are making is just silly unless you want a pat on the back. If you really are making bank and you want to get someone to buy you out, then start talking directly to the big players in your market. Then again, you won't have to, because they won't want to talk to you until you are a real threat to their business, at which point they'll be coming to you. Bragging to your early adopter community about your success just keeps them hyped for a bit.
Just make sure that you understand the the valuable problems are marketing and sales, not code.
Writing code is not hard. (Even an AI can do that.) Building a product is harder, but that's the easy part.
The harder part is reaching people who would benefit from consuming your value. Facebook and Google offer value to you in this space, and because this space is hard they make the big bucks.
Once you've reached the market convincing them to part with money is the next hard problem.
So yes, by all means solve a problem. Build the app, write the code. That is necessary but not sufficient.
>> not posting about $$
Honestly it doesn't really matter what you're posting about. Posting is marketing. Building an audience. It's one way, and yes feel free to do what works for you. Try and be different, don't just follow the herd.
Coding is easy. Marketing is hard.
Somehow, this suggests that perhaps your rubric needs amending.
The former is the nature of data itself, the latter having come into the existence the first time a creature with more than a handful of neurons was capable of making the choice to take what was right in front of it as opposed to venturing far afield for something similar. Both predate humans by millions of years at the least, and do not require the abstractions of market and money, or even the homo sapiens which first coined these concepts.
While these two give rise to the freeloading scamp who attempts to read entire magazine at the news stand if they can get away with it, the printing press or coinage are not specifically required, and, if we were to ever meet other aliens with some kind of civilization, they would likely have situations parallel enough to end up in our eventual xenoanthropology textbooks. Assuming they're not so busy coming up with their own copies of To Serve Man that we haven't the time for us to write said texts.
Fastmail, Garmin, Slack etc. WhatsApp had a paid model until Facebook bought it.
This does not mean that journalism isn't valuable enough to some people. It just means that the market for journalism shrank.
High-quality, investigative journalism is an essential institution for a functioning democracy, yet it's not valued by the people it is most important to: average citizens.
https://theworld.org/stories/2024/08/27/a-rise-in-water-rela...
The ONLY reason I have any interest in someone's output is if it is something they themselves actually care about, what they actually think, etc. I want to know what they have to say. There is absolutely no value in them trying to say what they think I want to hear, worse, what they think most people want to hear.
The second someone says "tell me what you want" I'm out. If I have to tell them that I'm interested in x, and then they go investigate x, what value is that to anyone? What insight can they bring to me about the topic of x? Why should I care what they have to say about x when 2 seconds ago they had no knowledge of it? No one's mere personality is so awesome that just having them do the same exact google search I can do and read the same exact intro material I can read and blatting out their initial reactions based on just that, results in something worthwhile.
Whether your numbers (or your sales) are good or bad, it is a factor to consider, but it can't be the fundamental point of your existence. You have to have some legitimate point that stands on it's own, and only then, maybe, you can live off of it somehow.
If you only care that you somehow get money, and don't care how, what value is that to me? Why would I as a customer give you money for anything? Even if you were trying to pander to exactly what I said I wanted, if I don't perceive that you are deeply knowldgeable and insightful and experienced in that topic, or at least maybe new but genuinely interested in working in that field or on that problem, but just trying to say yes to anything, no way in the world am I choosing you to supply that need.
MrBeast's leaked production document is pretty much exactly this: trying to anticipate what people will click on, what will go viral, and throwing all their weight behind it.
Now it's fair to say that you, personally, place no value in viral content such as that. On the other hand, it's clearly not the case that this content is of no value to anyone. Very broad-based entertainment like this is about providing a small amount of value to a very large number of people.
Whether this is good or bad for society is a different question. Markets have never been able to solve that problem.
They’re entrepreneurs who don’t really care what you call them. Of course people will try to make money, not everyone can afford to (or is willing to) maintain whole side projects for fun. Some people have side projects unrelated to their main line of work.
If you solve valuable problems you will make money.
If you have a side project then spend all your time solving valuable problems not posting about $$
Unfortunately, like a casino a lot of tech is an illusion, e.g. social media- you walk in and it’s flashy and exciting, but you walk out having lost hours of your time and possibly a few brain cells.
Edit: Deleted a claim that was probably stronger than I meant.
Then media started using it to mean "computer criminal", which was annoying.
Then "I don't code I solve problems" tech bros coopted it, which is worse. Looks like now you're a hacker if you identify a need and monetize it.
I am fully cognizant I am writing this on a VC-backed founder oriented site called Hacker News, but I like to think there's still some good ol hacker spirit here, YC being named after an extremely nerdy thing and not "SaaS Launchpad" or somesuch.
(yes yes old man yelling at cloud, get off my lawn, etc)
Doing it to your own car is obviously very different from stealing someone else’s, however it’s not illegal to “hack” your own car. The theft part is what gets you in trouble.
I'm certain some car company will sue you if they get to know that you did.
I've always known hacking as a term specifically related to bypassing security in digital systems. Think Matthew Broderick gaining access to government networks via a phone line. This was hacking that would always get you in trouble if caught.
I'm not quite sure when "hacking" was repurposed as a term for using something in a way it wasn't intended ("life hacks" or "kitchen hacks", etc).
Now hacking is about challenging social norms? I'm very lost at this point, in an "old man shakes fist at clouds" kind of way.
Discussed on Hacker News here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33255920 and more recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41496725
I don’t think that’s hacker culture. It’s just the mainstream adoption of hacker culture, don’t let it replace the real thing in your mind. When lots and lots of people started playing candy crush on phones, it wasn’t gamer culture that changed, just the public perception of gaming.
There are still people out there who conform to the description you laid out. Are there lots and lots of them? No. It does seem to be a growing segment though.
(Not trying to gatekeep—anyone can be a hacker, no matter when they start. Just sharing some fun memories—I still remember upgrading from a 386 to a 486, then to a Pentium 133. Or the LAN parties. Or when IRC splits let you take over a popular channel for a while! Fun times! The new tools being built today, especially around AI, are just as exciting and remind me of the early days of the internet. There's so much more to create!)
You really should. Without gates everything of value is stolen and we're left with nothing but grifters.
When I was a young adult and especially a teenager, I spent a lot of time making things out of pure desire to because I didn't have to think too much about my financial situation (present and future). That unfortunately gave way with age, and now ~15 years later whenever I engage with these activities there's a voice in the back of my head nagging, asking how doing those things instead of something that could potentially bring a financial return might negatively impact ability to achieve short term goals, tide over periods of economic uncertainty, have enough money for retirement, etc.
It's probably not the right way to think since personal projects that might seem unprofitable on their face can bring benefits in unexpected ways, but it's a problem nonetheless.
Of course, this isn’t how it actually seems to work - there is some truth to it for most people, but if you “overdraw” from one bucket and “neglect” another bucket, they will change sizes.
At 4 million in the bank (and various assets) you should be good to "escape," if by escape you mean "not need to sell your labor to live" anymore. 4 million gives you more than enough residuals to live off until death. Less if some of that is in property so you don't have to pay rent. Less if you retire to southeast Asia and engage in geographic arbitrage. You spent years paying for carrier groups and precision missiles, why not reap the rewards?
So far as I can judge, this is the only way the system permits escape.
If you're interested in permitless escape, one of my favorite introductions to the subject is "Walkaway" by Cory Doctorow, a wonderful amalgamation of hacker culture, anarchism, sustainability, anti capitalism, and communism. Even if you think some of those are dirty words, if you're at all interested in EV tech, 3d printing, batteries, solar, zero trust ID, or transhumanism, you'll probably enjoy that book. He basically just answers every "but what if..." you could think of for a group of hackers living in an abandoned rust belt town.
Personally I'm right now very interested in food forests and tech projects researching local supply chain production of equipment, such as https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ the global village construction set and https://simplifier.neocities.org whoever this person is that's been documenting their efforts building things like solar panels and circuit boards in their garage from raw materials for nearly the last decade.
Assuming you’re talking about building an app for other people, I personally would not, no. The market is sending a clear signal that it values the app at zero dollars. In other words, they don’t want it.
> If not then the problem you are solving is probably not important and a waste of your time anyway.
This is exactly the question that charging money answers: Do people just say they want your app or are they willing to “put their money where their mouth is” and actually buy it?
(Also note that not all things are paid for with money. Some are paid for with time or attention, so adjust for that if necessary.)
I'm sure this analogy is a bit absurd (and I'd love to see it torn apart), but I hope it opens readers to the premise that some highly desirable and important emotional, intellectual and social objects should exist even when there is no market for some of their forms
Edit: I can’t tell if you’re willfully misreading what I wrote or just trying to be cute. At no point did I assert that nothing should be created without a market. But if you’re creating something for other people then those other people are, by definition, your market, and you should pay close attention to signs that they actually want what you’ve created (like a willingness to trade dollars or time or attention).
Hacking doesn't require something to be built for other people.
Oh but those are very different things
An app that people would pay $0 is still more valuable (and might I say, a lot more valuable) than an app that people wouldn't install for free
I made a super niche modding tool a few weeks ago; it's got one star on GitHub but the two nerds that have actually used it are delighted with it and I'm very happy about that. The notion another few in the future will find it is oddly nice to think about
So the attention combined with the desire to escape the grind which is only offered in combination by tech founder, has nearly fully been consumed in the broader machine of capitalism.
When we ran out of stored resources to consume, we unsustainably consumed our own attention, and then when that was gone, we turned our attention to the money machine that made it possible, and started eating that.
Most hackers some 20 years ago weren't worried about money, so they could naturally explore their curiosities in their free time. Hustle culture in general seems to rise and fall inversely to the economic situtation, so I'm not too surprised that we're shifting to $$ over curiosity at the moment.
The people who do end up getting a lot of attention, they’re better at marketing, but not necessarily building. This is how you end up with people creating pretty-looking tools and products that aren’t particularly innovative but make for nice screenshots.
I'm not as cynical with the idea, but you identified the core issue (be it the algorithm or people that came first is an exercise for the reader): Code doesn't make for good engagement with the current structure of social media. your web design or visualization or even simple pie charts of performance differences (obligatory https://www.hackingsap.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/dilbert_p...) is what gets people in. visuals what may or may not be the actual selling point of your project.
I don't really know how to get over that hump. You need some base audience first, and you want to make sure you aren't forgotten. So some public building will always be needed to maintain that.
I guess this is what kids with rich parents whos trust fund hasnt matured yet do to kill time nowdays?
Reminds me of the crypto space during the peak of its hype, where people wrote a flood of articles and software, attracting attention, claiming to be important and world-changing. Yet a year or two later, have evaporated into much ado about nothing. I'm not discounting the possibility that some of it will eventually become popular and practical, but there was sure a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The Hustle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
Some indie hacker projects do scale into successful bootstrapped businesses with teams of developers or receive VC funding, but that is the exception. Scaling requires the founder to have a larger vision beyond just making quick bucks and remaining independent—independence being a core motivation of indie hacking in the first place. https://www.lycee.ai/blog/levelsio-and-the-dilemma-of-premat...
Everyone in each community became pretty evangelical about BIP due to group think. I bought in at first but became very skeptical eventually as well. Not only do I question the actual efficacy here both in $$ and quality of work, but I think it's a bit inconsiderate to expect everyone to be on board with being this open with their work or push as hard as they did.
I'll occasionally post a bit of what i'm working on but I also after following many "makers" and the like, started becoming really bored with every detail of what they are working on. I say just show me a case study usually unless I'm already intrigued with the end product or you are doing something of great interest/impact
For a lot of solo founders, though, it’s not just about visibility. It’s about support. Building something alone can be isolating, and sharing your progress becomes a way to stay connected, even when you’re grinding away in a room by yourself. The openness keeps you grounded and helps ward off the burnout that comes with long stretches of isolation.
It also puts you on the radar of other entrepreneurs and investors. They see what you’re up to and can offer feedback, partnerships, or even funding without you having to chase them down. You’re essentially creating a public portfolio of your work in real time.
Some people also use it as a humblebrag—a way to show off without being too obvious about it. That’s fine if that’s your thing, but for most, it’s a way to turn the lonely process of building into something more connected and human.
And I think that shouldn’t be discouraged.
Of course there are outliers like those who keep sharing their MRR, ARR, etc and then down the line sell an e-book on how to replicate their "success". I have followed enough "baits" to notice the pattern and ignore.
Based on my observation, all the social platforms are now circling the drain of optimizing for engagement, and posts about $$$ get 100x higher engagement than posts about product development insights, reflections, etc.
So the small subset of posts that actually make it to your timeline to be observed are often the ones about money.
That's been my experience building in public so far.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But back then most indie hackers only share numbers in their monthly reports, me included[1]. And it's not just MRR screenshots with no content.
Many shared their lessons, experiments, personal struggles... I can't stress enough how helpful this was. To me and to many founders I've talked with. It helps us with the loneliness and we learned from each other's mistakes...
I made a lot of online friends during this period. We were (still are?) inexperienced founders who trying to bootstrap a profitable business and share the experience.
I stopped BIP now, mostly because it takes more time and effort than I could afford. And posting MRR screenshots only is bragging in public, not building in public.
BUT I still believe in the value of BIP, especially when for a newcomer.
You may find people who genuinely support your journey, and if you're lucky, you might build a decent following on Twitter.
Your customers root for you because of your personal and authentic "brand".
Seasoned founders might reach out and point out what you're doing wrong, avoiding making the same mistakes (I did get a lot of valuable advice from successful founders—to me, this has been the biggest value I get out of BIP)
BUT if you treat it as a marketing channel, it probably won't work. Like others mentioned, it's saturated and you're only attracting the wrong kind of audience.
If I was to start again, I would treat BIP as the sandbox to launch my product: ask for feedback, search for a few early adopters who might benefit from my product but not necessarily my ICP.
[0]: https://ktool.io
I keep sharing my thoughts and what I'm working on. Those posts barely get any impressions, but I don't want to post stuff just to please the algorithm.
Building in public for entrepreneurs as audience porn to -feel good about feeling good is a lot harder unless its a product for them.
To me, it's doesn't always make sense to uncover unmet demand in public. But, my own bias in that sentence is I'm aware of that enough to perhaps know the difference, and I very well still might done it if I was starting out.
It's good to speak to the problems of your clients - building in that public is what can be helpful.
I like the indiehackers community a lot, but there's no shortage of lurkers who will imitate. The goal is getting ahead and staying ahead and leveraging positioning others may never understand.
I get that ‘it’s not about the idea - the execution is what matters,’ but why make an already difficult journey that much harder?
I love the discussion. I think you may just have self-biased your Twitter feed, and so to you it looks like the world is building in public, but to 99% of the population it's very rare.
Loved the discussion though, and your portfolio and blog are great.
Here's my user test: https://news.pub/?try=https://www.youtube.com/embed/10SIY3jE...
Anyway I have an app idea for a very small annoyance in my daily life. Listening to Pieter Levels inspired me to at least try and ship it. But there's no way I'm comfortable with all the other indy hacker shite I'd need to do to, like build a twitter profile etc. My only hope is probably showing it on a sub Reddit and seeing if anyone finds it useful.
Anyway, as I work as a developer, even if it fails, it doesn't matter. I'll learn a lot by doing it.
Yeah but it’s less toxic politics, more corporate sycophancy, lots of “How I became an effective cog maximally aligned with the company goals”. People fueling their careers by burning their dignity.
Other people can steal your plans and ideas, they can't steal your revenue.
Also, rather than declaring that other people should rethink what they are doing, maybe just reconsider your choice to be involved in it.
Full "build in public" isn't for me, if it matters.
I think there's your first problem right there. I recommend seeking dev communities on more federated social networks. I have found there to be more support and less clout/lore building than on Twitter. And supportive communities ship products!
I still build in public (https://maxrozen.com/articles?q=diaries), but spend more of my time on traditional marketing efforts instead.
If you'd like to sponsor my work, feel free to check out an app I developed:
With one-click, Xylect explains your selected text using an AI knowledge engine, no matter which app you're currently using. It's like bringing Perplexity + dictionary to every app.
I'm also on Twitter/X and Mastodon. I'll share more thoughts in the future:
> If you're trying to build a business then you must be always be selling and marketing.
Yes. I am only giving marketing advice. Sales is unfortunately embedded in so many other areas of life besides commerce.
It basically talks about how people will change their reasoning to suit public opinion when they work publically. You might imagine a scientist who gets a public grant and is required to share their findings publically.
In this hypothetical scenario, let's say their findings are required to be explainable to the public at large. The reality is that when you're building anything (whether it's a theory or a product), the reality is that causes and effects are not always clear nor will they ever be as we see with the human body for example.
As such, while we might think imposing transparency would increase trust, the reality is you'll often find ad-hoc justifications for why things are the way they are rather than just saying "We don't know why X or Y".
The author also presented the same ideas as a talk for anyone who prefers video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcEJY61FKIc
Entire communities started up around our product. They communicated publicly with us constantly. Their favorite past times were thinking up wild new features that we absolutely must have and trying to devine what was happening internally by over analyzing everything we said. Many of the community members used the size of their community to try to bully us into doing what they wanted. I personally had several emails telling me I was an idiot and a fraud. We were a victim of our own success.
It's the same fate that every open source developer experiences. As soon as you open yourself up to the world, everybody wants something from you and they want it now. If you already have a mature product with a healthy sales funnel and a clear vision, you can market what you have as you wish. If you're in the middle of creating something and you talk about it with others, they will all want a say in what you create and they will be upset if you don't act on their suggestions.
Now that I'm in a large company but working on a new and exciting project, we have hit the same problem internally - everybody who hears about it wants us to build it to suit them and they are disappointed when we instead try to build something that works for everyone. Any other product we made we never talked about into it was largely built and ready to start selling and we never had that kind of bullying behavior.
Something about being on the early phases of development makes people think you want their suggestions and they get rather upset when you don't build what they have in mind. That's why it's better to keep to yourself while you get the foundations in place, then carefully choose who you discuss it with until it's ready for the world to start buying it.