Summary of "If you're not building in public, watch this now."
The video titled "If you're not building in public, watch this now." features Gus, a producer at Starter Story, sharing his recent experience and strategy of building an app publicly on social media, particularly Twitter. The discussion highlights the effectiveness of building in public as a marketing and growth strategy, even for beginners without prior software experience.
Main Financial Strategies, Market Analyses, and Business Trends:
- Building in Public as a Growth Strategy: Gus demonstrates how openly sharing the development process, struggles, and wins of building an app can generate significant engagement, followers, impressions, and even sales without traditional marketing.
- Authentic Storytelling and Transparency: Posting daily updates about progress, challenges, and personal experiences creates a community feel and resonates with audiences, leading to organic growth and user interest.
- Leveraging Social Proof and Visual Content: Sharing videos of oneself working, screenshots, and point-of-view (POV) posts showing the app or coding environment helps attract attention and engagement.
- Iterative Content Improvement: Gus experiments with different formats—adding captions, using props, improving hooks—to optimize reach and engagement, learning from each post’s performance.
- Repurposing and Adapting Successful Content: Gus openly admits to borrowing and adapting successful post formats from others in the community, showing that inspiration and iteration are key to growth.
- Monetization Early in the Process: Despite being early-stage, Gus made initial sales shortly after launching, demonstrating that building in public can lead to early revenue even with a small audience.
- Using AI Tools to Facilitate Building in Public: The video introduces an AI-powered tool (gobuildinpublic.com) that generates 30-day tweet strategies tailored to a builder’s project and challenges, helping overcome content creation hurdles and maintain consistency.
Methodology / Step-by-Step Guide to Building in Public (as demonstrated by Gus):
- Step 1: Build Something Real Start by actually building a product or project. Without something tangible, it’s harder to share meaningful updates.
- Step 2: Share Daily Updates Post simple, authentic daily updates about progress, struggles, and learnings. These can be short videos, images, or text posts.
- Step 3: Show Your Face and Workspace Use videos or images that include your face or point-of-view shots to humanize the process and increase engagement.
- Step 4: Use Visuals and Captions Add screenshots, app images, and captions to posts to make them more accessible and appealing.
- Step 5: Learn and Iterate Analyze which posts get more views and engagement, then tweak your approach—better hooks, improved editing, more vulnerability.
- Step 6: Draw Inspiration from Others Follow and study creators in your niche, borrow ideas, and adapt them to your style.
- Step 7: Maintain Consistency Aim to post at least once or twice a day to stay visible and build momentum.
- Step 8: Engage with Your Community Respond to comments and DMs when possible to build relationships and foster a sense of community.
- Step 9: Celebrate Milestones Publicly Share launches, sales, rejections, and successes openly to keep the story compelling.
- Step 10: Use Tools to Help Consider using AI-generated content strategies or scheduling tools to maintain consistency and reduce friction.
Key Results and Insights:
- Gus grew from about 500 to 1,400 followers in a few weeks.
- Some posts reached tens of thousands of views (one hit nearly 50,000 views).
- He made multiple app sales shortly after launch, enough to cover initial costs.
- Building in public led to meaningful engagement, including feedback, bug reports, and user testimonials.
- The process is described as addictive and motivating, fueling new ideas and continuous building.
Presenters / Sources:
- Gus – Producer at Starter Story and app builder sharing his firsthand experience.
- Interviewer / Host – Likely a Starter Story team member (name not specified).
- Mentioned Influencers:
- Sherry (Peak Money app builder)
- Yoni (Instagram daily builder updates)
- Jack Fris (Twitter content creator)
- Daniel Volo (Twitter course creator)
- Alex Finn (Builder sharing daily updates)
Summary:
This video serves as a compelling case study and practical guide on the power of building in public to grow an audience, validate ideas, and generate early revenue. Gus’s transparent sharing of his journey—from learning to code, posting daily updates, handling criticism, to making his first sales—illustrates that consistent, authentic storytelling combined with visual content can significantly amplify a product’s reach. The introduction of an AI tool to automate content ideas further
Category
Business and Finance