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Building in public is itself a story that sells your product

Once you start building in public you're sharing how you build it, for whom you build it & also build a connection with your users.

Ritika Mehta

Jun 26, 2021

Hey everyone👋, welcome to the 13th newsletter.

With building in public you’re not only documenting the process but you’re building leverage, which helps in the long run. Founder’s build in public, share their struggles & vulnerabilities and bring people along with the journey.

Usually building in public has a back story for most people. For me, I build a product last year, only promoted it a few times, didn’t get many users or feedback & didn’t make any sales. Ultimately, it failed, I wasted my money, hence lesson learned.

Currently, I’m building something new, got some good feedback & I’m already working on building its visibility by building in public.

And I’m not only doing this on Twitter but I’m sharing about it on this newsletter & Medium blog; never rely on one platform.

Why building in public is so effective:

You get users
You help other founders/builders, in so many ways (indirectly or directly) - motivate them, they might be stuck somewhere, aternative tools, new things to try out, etc.
You’re building your own brand & visibility
Build up trust
You become your own PR - you don’t have to spend money on paid ads, PRs, media agency to distribute your work. You’ll automatically attract them.

Ritika Mehta @_ritikamehta

I have realized after starting #buildinpublic & writing, I've got more media attention, interviews & features than ever before. Once you start building in public you become your own media agency (without paying for it).

Here’s how you can build in public:

Share the process, lessons, problems, solutions - all the things you go through while building the product silently.
Choose a platform - remember Twitter is not the only place where people build in public. Maria from LinguaTrip is building a community, products, & her personal brand on Instagram.
Observe & learn from other people building in public.

Remember while building in public you need to know how much to share & what to share. Sometimes there are things that don’t require too much transparency.

Some of your ideas may cause others to lash out and criticize you. If you want to build in public, you have to be able to withstand some level of public critique. Although, you can mostly brush it off, it is jolting at the start when what you thought was a great idea becomes weaponized. — Brandon Zhan

Build-in Public launches 🚀

Struggling how to build in public (a really great analysis), see this 👇🏻

Ivan Romanovich 🧐 @roma_i_m

BuildInPublic Twitter Inspiration Handbook I analyzed about 200 #BuildInPublic twitter accounts, collected the best practices of #BuildingInPublic and grouped them into categories. Hope you find it useful. Thread🔽

Vsjo

Yihui is building Vsjo - A gratitude journal with a visual focus. She launched it to her early beta testers recently. Here’s why she’s building it 👇🏻

Yihui 🎐 @empirepowder

Building something close to home. I've been on the journey of self-discovery, and one benefit I learned is the power of gratitude. It's hard to show it without sounding like a fortune cookie so what better way to talk about it than by making it? This is why I'm building VSJO:

I’m myself a big believer of gratitude & how it has changed my mindset - especially I’ve stopped worrying about small or big things in my life & go with the flow. Gratitude is the key.

If you’re too tired of writing every day, give it a try to visual gratitude.

Hey Its Harold

Kyleigh Smith is building Hey Its Harold. What I love about her building in public process is such a great amount of transparency.

Kyleigh Smith @bagelsangranola

As of today I'm starting to build my side project in public! It's called @hey_its_harold, a habit tracker that you can actually stick to. Here are my stats so far: 📅 4 months in 👥 6 users 🤳 287 responses logged ⌛️2 on waitlist 💰 $0 MRR 💸 ~$20/mo costs Thread 👇

Some musings 🥁

I have also created a free First-time founder’s resource, which you can download & share and I’ve updated it with new links yesterday.
Here’s a newsletter I discovered on how startups got their first 1000 subscribers or users. You can learn a lot from these success stories.
Jackson wrote about Quitting months ago but I stumbled upon it recently. It said, how we force ourselves to keep doing the projects we are no longer interested in just because we've invested a lot of time & energy in building them.
Old but the title is enough to make you read it - How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time.
Currently, Aletheia has become my favorite artist 👇🏻

Aletheia Délivré 🌳 @delivreal

Treasure what’s finite.

Pitcher with water representing “our resources” and 6 different cups representing: side project, family time, walks, reading/writing/learning, rest, and saying no. Choose your vessels carefully.

Until next time 👋!

👋 PS: I’m Ritika founder, product marketer and advisor for early-stage startups, find more here or connect with her here. If you’re a first-time founder looking for curated resources, download here. If you enjoyed this post, read the past issues here. You can also promote your product in this newsletter.

A big thanks for reading & sharing!