As Twitter suddenly feels like anarchy, building in public has gone from looking incredibly cool to questionable
Building products that serve a market need and earn a profit is hard.
Customer behaviours and wants constantly change, and data collection is often complicated and expensive. How do founders know if they’re building the right product early?
Having an MVP is great, but a community of ardent followers who go with you on the journey and provide validation, applause, and criticism is even better.
In their hunt for product-market fit, many new-age entrepreneurs build in public. This means sharing company milestones, failures, and updates with a community on social platforms like Twitter.
This may involve using these platforms to give the audience a sneak peek into the product that is to come, letting them in on details that went into building it, and allowing people the opportunity to provide direct feedback
Companies like Fast tweet about strategies such as those used to improve customer loyalty and even simple initiatives to get community reactions. Others like Ghost even share numbers like monthly revenue, churn, and user statistics.
However, building in public could go beyond just sharing company information. It can be a lot more personal.
Founders often bare their authentic selves and share their journey of building products. This comes with taking their audience through both the wins and struggles of the journey.
They are subject to both trolls and cheerleaders; they face critique and acclaim.
The process, when done consistently, builds trust. After regularly seeing content – the founder’s methods, ideology, and fears – the audience begins to appreciate transparency.
When people trust you, they begin to tell others about you. They are also more willing to give you and your products a shot.
Following the followers’ demographic, founders can use public opinion to get early product feedback and validate ideas. It can be an opportunity to brush with the product’s potential users and test if they will pay.
Additionally, it makes the community invested in the founder and the brand. They know the reality behind the scenes, the human touch, and just the final product.
Such an approach often involves being your authentic self and committing to both the risks and responsibilities.
It may not be for everyone.
Building in public also comes with scary levels of vulnerability. It does require confidence to put your product out there and open the doors to judgment.
While you might get insights and advice, social media is often polarized and giving opinions is free. Founders must be thick-skinned to face brutal trolls often, be mocked and risk failing in public view.
From a business perspective, the crowd of followers exposed to your product and ideas also consists of competitors. While execution is everything, you risk feeding them with thoughts and exposing them to your mistakes.
It is perhaps not for every company.
For Apple to build its following product in public would be to expose sensitive blueprints to competitors. For Coke, it might mean sharing its recipe online!
Even for startups, there always runs the risk of over-sharing and providing competitors with information. The trade-offs may not always be apparent.
Finally, building in public takes time! Creating meaningful content that does justice to people’s time and attention, sharing it consistently and reading comments and reactions is an extensive exercise.
Would you rather be building than writing about what, where and how you are building?