Day 3: Build in public
The first step to building in public is documenting your work as you build. This post includes at least 3 things that I’ve worked on or thought about today. Maybe these notes will turn into social posts. Regardless they tell the story of my journey. My founder’s log.
Naming is hard
One of the most useful things I learned from the Build in Public Mastery class that I took in January was that I don’t have to make every product decision alone. In fact, the process of building in public requires that you include your community in the decision making and by doing this you are able to engage and connect with them deeper.
Last night I started thinking of some names for the video chat app and put together 4 different iterations to get feedback on which name is the best.
Video chat app name ideas
Eureka!
I figured out what I want to do for the remaining days of the Build in Public Sprint. Kevon mentioned to me that I don’t have to be so fixed on a single type of user and tailoring all my content to them. My audience will be mixed with different types of people. This is great because I can’t help myself from sharing my code. I expect many of my posts to continue to center on whatever code I’m writing.
But after sitting down today to revisit my plans for this quarter it hit me: I want to build a community in public. Specifically, a community of community builders. I’m already in the process of interviewing 100 community builders so it will be really fun to build a community of them.
Market research
I’ll spend February becoming a community expert. I’ll join and continue to contribute to the following communities:
Slack, Free, Tech - Kernel
Discord, Paid, Entrepreneurship - Small Bets
Telegram, Paid, Software Dev - Culture Coders - NEW
TikTok, Free, Social - Community Builders - NEW
IRL, Free, Queer Running Club
Instead of building a community for community builders, I was thinking I could join Community Club, however it seems that they are no longer operational. In my failed attempts to at least learn from their self-paced courses, I came across their tools list which is basically my competitors list. So that was fortuitous!
