You seem to put a lot of effort into The MVP Sprint. I'm curious how you find the time while also building the actual product itself? Or do you consider it as a marketing channel for it as well?
I know many indie makers struggle marketing their product (opposed to building something), but "building in public" is become more and more common. I, and I'm sure many with me, am curious to more about how fruitful writing about your progress has been and if you've been able to quantify the ROI of it?
My initial motivation was twofold: (1) Build an audience that I can funnel into the product I'm building (as you said), and (2) Build lasting equity in something that I can take with me even if this idea fails.
A third benefit has been huge for me - building in public has given me external motivation to make progress every week. It's also forced me to articulate my thoughts and justify my decisions. I had to do this as a product manager when I had a boss, but you can easily get by without it as a solo founder.
I'll probably shift eventually to a 2-week sprint schedule. I can easily justify spending 25%+ of my time writing updates and promoting my content if it turns out to be a primary marketing channel.
A month into it, I have ~45k article reads, almost 500 subscribers, and about 50-60 waitlist signups for my product.
In terms of ROI - these are really just vanity metrics until I get paying users, so we'll see. I'm going to start building in a couple weeks and timebox an MVP to a month or less.
Makers perfect sense. I also like the manager example. I've never had a manager, but since I started hiring people I've become a better planner. I need to assign them tasks, so I need to think more strategically whereas if you're working just by yourself you can go weeks or even months doing busy work without really thinking about the bigger picture.
Hey Tim and welcome to WIP!
You seem to put a lot of effort into The MVP Sprint. I'm curious how you find the time while also building the actual product itself? Or do you consider it as a marketing channel for it as well?
I know many indie makers struggle marketing their product (opposed to building something), but "building in public" is become more and more common. I, and I'm sure many with me, am curious to more about how fruitful writing about your progress has been and if you've been able to quantify the ROI of it?
Thanks, Marc!
My initial motivation was twofold: (1) Build an audience that I can funnel into the product I'm building (as you said), and (2) Build lasting equity in something that I can take with me even if this idea fails.
A third benefit has been huge for me - building in public has given me external motivation to make progress every week. It's also forced me to articulate my thoughts and justify my decisions. I had to do this as a product manager when I had a boss, but you can easily get by without it as a solo founder.
I'll probably shift eventually to a 2-week sprint schedule. I can easily justify spending 25%+ of my time writing updates and promoting my content if it turns out to be a primary marketing channel.
A month into it, I have ~45k article reads, almost 500 subscribers, and about 50-60 waitlist signups for my product.
In terms of ROI - these are really just vanity metrics until I get paying users, so we'll see. I'm going to start building in a couple weeks and timebox an MVP to a month or less.
Makers perfect sense. I also like the manager example. I've never had a manager, but since I started hiring people I've become a better planner. I need to assign them tasks, so I need to think more strategically whereas if you're working just by yourself you can go weeks or even months doing busy work without really thinking about the bigger picture.