3 Strategies to Build in Public & Grow Your Audience Before Launch

So you're ready to build in public. If you don't know what that means, go to my first video. So you're ready to build in public, which means you're okay showing yourself out there or at least being vulnerable in terms of letting people know how you think, what you think, sharing your opinions about something, and talking about a problem that you're so passionate about that you've decided to build a solution for or create a product for. Assuming all of that is ready. How to even start and what to even talk about. And that is what we're going to talk about today. But before that, hi, my name is Paola. What do you even talk to people about when it comes to building in public? Let's take a step back here. In my previous video, I referenced Erin, who built a matcha business in Dublin because she couldn't find a good one, because she couldn't find a high quality one in the city from there she was able to create an audience before she was even ready to launch her cafe and translate that over to us in this moment is be able to build a following an audience before you're even launching a product so you already have a moat before you're even launched and to think like that we have to think about the strategies and ways to actually talk to the audience, knowing that you might be comfortable over one thing more than the other. So there are three ways to really create content and build in public. One is called the 90-10 rule. So let's say you have an idea, you don't really have a product yet, or you might have a product, but you don't really have a big direction yet. The 90-10 rule really is about talking to the audience the way like a friend would talk to you. You would talk about the problems that people are already having to go through and suggesting solutions with it without necessarily promoting whatever it is that you're building. Which is actually a lot harder, especially for people who just want their product to be known or think like, oh I just need to market my products, I need to keep talking about it. Which yes, but also this particular route is building an audience organically. So a lot of the times you're creating content that's meant to be helpful for the target customers that you want. 90% of the content would be around maybe talking about the problem that they already have, talking about your target industry, any updates, any news, anything that's really or centers around their problem or who they are as your target demographic. Let's actually talk about an example about this. You want to talk about there's tons of people who are having a tough time getting a job out there right now. You send thousands of resumes and nothing is coming back at you. So you start talking about this problem where finding a job nowadays is really hard. Don't just talk about the tool that you've already created around this. You can start posting videos or writing content around how people are sending thousands of resumes and nothing is getting back at them. Talk about potential tools, and there are tons of them that are already there to help them. Five tools that are there to automate their job search and send those resumes. Or even summarize a certain trend in terms of what's happening in a current niche that you might have. For example, for me, I would look into product management. So what skills, like probably AI skills or vibe coding skills. Kind of just talk about the industry of your target customer that you want. For example, if I wanted to talk about a niche for a particular business owner that I'd like to help with, for example, property management. There's tons of commercial properties out there. What type of property management tools are there? What are the problems that's usually needed to be solved? Like, what are the trends in terms of what types of commercial properties or even residential properties are coming down versus are ones that are resilient towards a recession? Like, what are these types of things? So things like that. Think about the topics in your industry that you're most likely going to have a conversation about, especially with the audience that you have. Focus on that 90% of giving value to them rather than just promoting. Eventually, you will be able to promote your tool or your business. It's just about making sure to build that organic reach. But yes, so the whole point is for you to just start talking to the audience that would eventually buy your product or service. So let's actually look at an actual example where this worked really, really well. So let's talk about Peter Lovels. He was one of the pioneers of the building public approach where he declared that he would build a dozen prototypes in a year. And one of the most successful prototypes around that is called Nomad List. And it only began as a Google spreadsheet. What he did though was he asked people on Twitter or X now to fill data around the cities that they're living in. In terms of cost of living, internet speeds, cafe culture, any safety concerns. Anything nomad would be interested in knowing in terms of finding the next place that they want to travel and work into. When he did have a full spreadsheet of information, that's when he just started coding. He even shared the code or how he coded in front of the audience. And to be perfectly frank, he was criticized as to being even messy in terms of his code. He shared his revenue. He shared his failures. And because of the way he did that, he was able to get some sort of cult following, especially from developers who also was attracted to messy things, weren't attracted to the perfect story. He also shares what data works and from there, the audience share what they like and what they don't like and it's an iterative approach. And that's just how we can think about it. Kind of like a conversation where you provide good value to people and you iterate from that. So a next approach here is called following a community. Whereas the 90-10 is you creating that content, looking for the algorithm to work in your favor, and getting the people to come at you or to come to you. Which, to be perfectly honest, if you don't have a follower, that can be pretty hard at first. Because these are usually the times where founders would often feel like they're shouting at the void. So now they're ready to be vulnerable and share their thoughts. And once they actually do it, they find themselves shouting at the void and no one's answering them. And that's a bit, it's a very disheartening approach. You have to remember, this is social media. You are competing with tons more information, entertaining or otherwise out there. So this approach, which is borrowing a community, is a way to really just, which is kind of the opposite, where you would actually go to establish platforms around the topic or niche community that you want to be in and basically find the high value profiles. and start commenting on their threads. You can do so by identifying high profile accounts in your target industries. In real life, the way you would do this is you can engage in Reddit threads, LinkedIn threads, basically any threads that you can think of. X or Twitter, Blue Sky, all of them would be kind of the perfect area to talk or to borrow community from. Actually, if you're not really ready to even show your face, you can even do so in Reddit community. So these are kind of ways where other people already established themselves in this field. So you're really just going there and interacting with the thread that they already have. This approach is actually really, really popular. It can be time consuming. I will admit that. So I haven't done this as much personally, but I know this is really perfect for those who don't really want to put their names out there yet or have no idea what to talk about. And I know a couple of people who've actually gotten businesses from this approach from Reddit nonetheless. Just kind of insane. Let's take a great example. Arvid Kahl, who created this SaaS platform called Feedback Panda, he was able to sold Feedback Panda by just marketing towards a borrowed community, by marketing and building a product, by just interacting with already established community. Feedback Panda is this platform that helps ESL teachers quickly generate feedback about their students to provide to the parents of the students. And this was inspired by Arvid's partner, Danielle, who was teaching English as a second language to Chinese students online. He saw how his partner would have to spend at least two extra unpaid hours just to write these feedback. And that's how he kind of started Feedback Panda. When he decided to create a prototype and a product for it, Danielle was actually the one who mainly did the marketing or sort of beta testing. She would go to establish communities that host a bunch of online ESL teachers who are having the same problem. By doing so, she only really exclusively did the marketing for Feedback Panda over this tribe. She didn't have to do the content so much. She just had to interact with people in this sort of established communities. She would comment and post in these communities and talk about Feedback Panda and get feedback from the people over there. And from there, Arvid would just create features that would solve the problems that most people talk about in these communities. And as they did that, they found their niche first. When they found their exclusive tribe in these online communities, they found their niche. They found that all the ESL teachers have the same exact problem, which is generating the student feedback for the parents and how it's eating their time. By talking to them and seeing that, they were able to focus specifically at the critical problem that they're trying to solve. Harvard argues that online communities already exist out there. And by that, he just approached it in terms of, well, this sort of creating an audience or talking to your audience is just relationship building. And that's how they found their first customers. And it just became a word of mouth. and that's how they turned Feedback Panda into a successful platform that they sold. What is the third and last approach? I would call this the founder-led brand approach. We talked about the 90-10 where you talk about the problems, the niche, the target industries, and then the second one which is forming the community and participating in threads with established communities within the target audience that you have. This one is a very interesting one, mainly because we're now separating you as the person to the product that you built. What that means is you yourself become your own brand. This is a very 50-50 approach. This is not for everyone, but this is how you would be more treated as a friend. You don't even really need to talk about your industry. You don't even need to talk about your niche. You don't even talk about your product. You would just talk about you and sharing your life. sharing the activities that you do, go to the gym, showing that. You as the founder actually becomes the star of the show. You become your own brand. You become your own business. This is actually a lot more common than you think. This is basically how influencers do it. If you think about it, influencers are watched because they're entertaining. People seem to like their personality or they seem personable and then they started getting brand deals and then that's how they talk about the product. So that's kind of this founder-led approach is being able to share your life as who you are and then talking about product that you're building. And I say this is more 50-50 because I don't think a lot of people who are building in public for the sake of their business would like this approach as much. But for those who do, it's very effective. I keep talking about the macho cafe story but she was able to build her business by just sharing herself and her thoughts her opinions at first and creating a sort of friend before she even talked about the product so it is very powerful because you know you befriend the audience first you kind of share your story they learn who you are they trust who you are before you even sell anything an example of this is Mark Luke. He created ShipFast. It's a video platform. But basically, while creating this, he was sharing something like his lifestyle in Bali, the house that he's living in, things like that. To be fair, that just became a visual proof of what ShipFast is supposed to be. But you can see how he made a name for himself before his business. And that's it for today. Three main ways for you to start thinking about how you can interact with your customers. 90-10, borrowing a community, or founder first. All of this to gather your audience and build in public. One allows you to call them in by creating content that attracts your audience. One tells you to borrow from an established platform that's already out there and find your audience there. And another alternative altogether is to establish yourself first and then establish your brand to be successful. None of this is really about you becoming an influencer or posting just for the sake of posting. Maybe the third one, but it is all about building in public and just trying to shorten that feedback loop and getting your moat and your audience. And if it feels like this is just extra work, you can just think about it as it'll already be a problem in the future and you're just getting ahead of it. And you never know actually. Sometimes it might be fun. It might be a cathartic way for you, especially when you share your thoughts out there in a way that makes sense. Now there are different platforms in terms of how you can turn these content into different things. so you can either write about it you can create videos such as this or you can create short snippets around and that is what the next few videos i'm going to talk about the first meeting i'll be talking about in the next video is linkedin and twitter or x so please stay tuned for that you can comment on this video and please tell me what you think what you're working on and i'll love to reply to that or you can even book time with me and we can go through whatever it is that you feel like you need help with but that's it thank you my name is paola and i'd love to see you again for the next video bye

So, you're ready to "Build in Public," but how do you actually start? What do you talk about when you don't have a huge following yet?

In this video, I break down three proven frameworks to help you share your journey, build trust, and create a moat around your business before you even launch your product. Whether you're a shy developer or a natural-born influencer, there is a strategy here for you.

In this video, we’ll cover:

1. The 90-10 Rule: Why providing 90% value and only 10% promotion is the secret to organic growth.
2. Borrowing a Community: How to leverage established platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn to find your first customers without an existing audience.
3. Founder-Led Branding: The "Influencer Approach" to building a personal brand that makes your product launch inevitable.

Case Studies Mentioned:
Pieter Levels (Nomad List) and the power of messy code.
Arvid Kahl & Danielle (Feedback Panda) on using niche communities.
Marc Lou (Shipfast) on building a lifestyle brand.

Timestamps:
0:00 - What does it mean to Build in Public?
1:28 - Strategy #1: The 90-10 Rule
4:38 - Case Study: Pieter Levels
6:07 - Strategy #2: Borrow a Community
8:07 - Case Study: Feedback Panda
10:25 - Strategy #3: The Founder-Led Brand
12:34 - Case Study: Marc Lou
15:02 - Summary: Which one is right for you?

Connect with me:
📸 Instagram: @psproductperson
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paolamariesantiago/
🌐 Website: psproductperson.com

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