Building in Public: Making mistakes in front of the world is a good thing 🏗
What is building in public? What are the benefits? How do you do it?
Hi, Ravdeep here. 👋
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Ok, before we start this issue, I realise that the last two issues were very long which people did appreciate but not so much as issues which were between 1000 - 1500 words. From this week on, I’ll try to keep the posts short and to the point. In case they require more context, I’ll split them into two parts or post the follow up on my Twitter/Linkedin. Works? Brilliant. Oh by the way, this is what is known as Building in Public. Let me explain.
What is Building in Public? 🏗
Unlike all the other technical jargon around the startup world, this one is pretty self-explanatory and straightforward. It exactly means what it says, when a startup builds a product or a service in public, they allow people to see their building process from the start.
With building in public, founders have a chance to share their entrepreneurial journey via social media. This includes learning, struggles, challenges, wins and even important business metrics that the company is performing on which leads to creating authenticity and trust with their audience.
But what are the benefits of building in public? 🤔
Transparency - Helps build trust in the brand. In a world where everyone tries to hide their practices from competitors, important elements of the brand also get hidden behind that veil.
Narrative - Building in public gives your future customers and audience a preview of what they can expect, capture their attention and also provide them a platform to give feedback and suggestions, thus allowing you to control the narrative.
Approachable - Building in public encourages people inside and outside your company to have a direct and honest conversation with you regarding your products, vision, progress etc. thus making you approachable.
Status - If you move early building in public in a specific field, it automatically makes you an expert in that field. I’m not saying that everyone who builds in public is an expert from the get-go but the ones who are ready to learn and unlearn in front of people automatically create a perception around them which helps a lot in the long run.
Audience - You already have a ready audience before you even start up which is always a win for any company, big or small. Rather than spending a lot of time, energy, and money on marketing, a startup can simply expose the public to its product during the Alpha and/or Beta stage.
Talent - People want to work with people who are transparent, hard-working and know their stuff. Building in public allows you to attract talent that appreciates you as a leader and wants to work with you.
Moat - Personally, I think this is the make or break for startups in most cases. In today’s world, moats look very different from 50 years ago. Moats such as culture, brand, personality, and community are very important in today’s scenario. The best thing about Building in Public is that it leads you to build all these moats at once.
Accountability - Entrepreneurs face a series of challenges on a day to day basis, there are some good days and the rest are pretty bad. One thing that sometimes gets difficult to maintain is accountability of your own work. Building in public allows you to fix this since you are answerable to your community even more now as opposed to building in stealth.
So, how do you build in public? 🎩
As effortless as Building in Public sounds, it needs to be highly intentional before you start with it. There has to be a strategy behind what you are posting, when you are posting it and how you’re engaging with your audience. You don’t need a full playbook to craft high-quality content but you need to have a few goals in mind before starting.
Four steps that you can follow: 🗒
#1 Set out your goals and define the ‘why’ for you building in public ✍️
Since a founder’s time is limited and actual work on the startup also needs to be done, we need to set some clear goals on what we aim to achieve through building in public. These could be:
To establish a brand
To establish your identity
Thought leadership
Community creation
Drive traffic to your business
Feedback collection
After setting out a specific set of goals, you can now aim to create content around the particular target group that you want to focus on.
#2 How can you share YOUR story ✉️
You can craft the story you want to share in various different ways, each having their own impact on your audience and peers. These stories can be around:
How you made certain decisions (Ref: Sahil from Gumroad: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company)
Learning from failures or successes (Ref: Tweet below)
I shipped all these apps in 2020. Most of them generated $0. 🎬 indielog.com $0 🌍 howdy.so $0 💡 influenswer.com $0 🐞 backlogs.co $1.99 👍 testimonial.to $3,025 in 10 days. But that's ok, just keep shipping! My stories👇
Product Analytics (Ref: Tweet below)
Can’t believe it’s only been 2 months since posting that tweet > 4,400 followers > 1,960 subscribers ~ $18k revenue Thanks everyone for your support this year! Hope this inspires you. Work hard & smart, build in public and be kind. You can profit from your passion too!This week I did a hat trick! > 2,000 followers > $1,000 in pre-order sales And now... 1,000 subscribers for BrainPint 🎉 Thank you to everyone who has got me here. Super grateful. https://t.co/J8iG7mobpMJanel @JanelSGM
Learning in Public: As you’re learning new skills, you share your progress of learning that particular topic with the entire internet.
Product Development: Sharing initial thoughts and designs of what you're planning to work on, you can get feedback way before you actually assign your time and resources to that particular project. This helps you determine if the idea is even worth going after, thus saving you plenty of time in the early stages.
#3 Show your work, don’t just tell the world about it 🤸♀️
You need to show what you’re doing to start building in public. Social media already has too many people who keep saying that they are doing this, doing that, we really don’t need another person in that group. Share your story, share business metrics, show what you’re making and how you’re making it, this will allow people to know you’re walking the talk.
#4 Patience is a virtue 🏆
Just like everything, this is a difficult process to begin but with constant experimentation, iterations, proactivity and creativity, this can start giving results very soon. IT WILL TAKE TIME, just hang in there and keep doing.
What channels can I use for Building in Public? 📺
Twitter, absolutely the first choice for this.
LinkedIn
YouTube
Forums
Website, your blog or own webpage
Email, newsletters like this one
Ok, one last thing before I close this issue. I have planned something for the end of the week for the newsletter but it depends on a few factors. I’ll share a list of examples of the companies that have built in public in that issue. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll share a post on my Twitter and LinkedIn with these examples.
Recommended reading this week
Why You Should Build Your Product in Public | Ryan Hoover, Product Hunt
Build in Public Cheatsheet (v1.0) | Ch Daniel
Learn how to build an audience in public by buildinpublic.xyz | KP
Paul Yacobian, Founder Copy.ai on Building in Public and Organic Marketing
Recommended listening this week
Thank you and have a brilliant week ahead. I’m planning something different for the end of the week and hopefully that happens. Also, this issue has inspired me to build in public so be ready for some statistics on my two startups, this newsletter and something else that I just recently started working on. Share the newsletter with your friends and family as that helps a lot and hit that little heart button!