How to Build SaaS in Public: A Step-by-Step Guide
To build your SaaS in public, you need to carefully share your journey, from ideation to launch and beyond, with your target audience. Transparency and trust might play a key role in attracting early adopters. This guide lays out a series of steps for implementing the strategy, including insights on common oversights to anticipate.
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Before sharing your journey, determine your objectives. Think about what you hope to achieve by building in public. Are you aiming to:
- attract investors? Communicate your progress and traction to potential investors..
- win early adopters and build a community? Generate interest and collect insight on your product.
- establish thought leadership? Establishing yourself as a domain expert requires demonstrating extensive knowledge and experience in your field.
- validate your idea? Test market interest and refine your product based on feedback.
When you define your goals, you create a framework for developing your content strategy and assessing its effectiveness.
În continuare, identify your ideal customer profile. Consider their:
- Demographics (age, location, occupation)
- Pain points and needs
- Preferred communication methods
Having a clear understanding of your target audience is important for crafting personalized communication and selecting the most effective platforms to reach them.
Goal |
Content Strategy |
Channel Strategy |
Attract investors |
Showcase traction, highlight key metrics, share roadmap |
LinkedIn, Twitter, investor platforms, pitch decks |
Gain early users |
Focus on product updates, gather feedback, build community |
Twitter, Product Hunt, relevant subreddits, Discord |
Thought leadership |
Share insights, create educational content, engage in discussions |
Blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, industry events, podcasts |
Validate idea |
Present your concept, solicit feedback, conduct surveys |
Twitter, relevant online communities, landing page with signup form |
Free Content Calendar Template for Building SaaS in Public
Plan and organize your Building in Public content strategy. Organize your:
-
channels
-
topics
-
and goals!
Choose Your Channels
Select platforms where your target audience is present. Consider the following channels:
- Twitter: Tweets can be utilized to disseminate quick updates and engage in discussions through the use of relevant hashtags such as #buildinpublic and #SaaS. Copy AI, launched in 2020 by Paul Yacoubian and Chris Lu, focused on leveraging Twitter to engage with potential users and build an engaged community. This strategy, along with other factors, contributed to the company achieving a monthly recurring revenue of over $157,000.
- Blogs: Publishing in-depth articles, tutorials, and detailed updates. Founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry, ConvertKit saw a monthly recurring revenue of $2,464,976, which accompanied their blogging strategy for dissemination.
- Community Forums: Connect with your target audience on platforms like Indie Hackers, Hacker News, or niche communities relevant to your SaaS.
- LinkedIn function is to provide a space for professionals to engage in networking, industry knowledge exchange, and professional development.
- YouTube: Develop video content highlighting your product, tutorials, or behind-the-scenes glimpses of your development process.
Use channels that align with your style and where you feel most comfortable interacting with your audience. We suggest focusing on a few key platforms.
Free Content Calendar Template for Building SaaS in Public
Plan and organize your Building in Public content strategy. Organize your:
-
channels
-
topics
-
and goals!
Craft Valuable Content
Communicate your progress openly using authentic stories of your experiences. Instead of just making simple updates and announcements, focus on creating content with a strong connection to your target audience.
- Document your journey: Share regular updates on your progress, milestones, and challenges. Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List, openly documented his process, including revenue numbers and challenges. The formation of a dedicated user base may have been influenced by the establishment of trust.
- Solicit feedback: Engage with your audience and seek their input on product features, design, and overall direction. Buffer, under the leadership of Joel Gascoigne, implemented a strategy of gathering user input through regular feedback requests and sharing insights into their product direction.
- Share insights with clients: Provide information related to your SaaS expertise. Consider creating tutorials or instructional videos to help address real concerns or questions of your target audience.
- Give people a look at what you do: Let your audience see how you develop your product or service. Show your design iterations, code snippets (without revealing sensitive information), and decision-making frameworks.
Content Type |
Exemplu |
Progress update |
“Just launched a new landing page for our SaaS! Check it out and let me know what you think: [link]” |
Lesson learned |
“We made a mistake by prioritizing feature X over feature Y. Here’s what we learned and how we’re pivoting…” |
Insight |
“Top 3 marketing strategies for SaaS businesses in the [industry] space…” |
Behind-the-scenes |
“Here’s a sneak peek at our design process for the new user interface. We’re experimenting with [design concept] to improve user experience.” |
Free Content Calendar Template for Building SaaS in Public
Plan and organize your Building in Public content strategy. Organize your:
-
channels
-
topics
-
and goals!
Be Consistent and Transparent
Building in public can be a long-term journey, like a marathon. Maintaining a consistent content publication schedule could contribute to audience engagement and information dissemination.
- Create a content calendar: Plan your content in advance to ensure regular updates.
- Set realistic goals: Start with a posting schedule and gradually increase frequency.
- Transparență requires sharing successes and setbacks. Handling mistakes, whether intentional or not, relates to user trust and reflects the importance of efficiently solving problems for the user.
- Respond to comments and questions: Engage with your audience and foster a sense of community.
Consistency and transparency are key to building credibility and trust with your audience.
Free Content Calendar Template for Building SaaS in Public
Plan and organize your Building in Public content strategy. Organize your:
-
channels
-
topics
-
and goals!
Protect Your Intellectual Property
Transparency is valuable, but prioritize the protection of sensitive information that could threaten your market advantage.
- Focus on the process: Share your journey without revealing your core intellectual property or trade secrets.
- Focus on conceptual aspects of your technical decisions without disclosing source code.
- Information dissemination: Distribute knowledge strategically, focusing on customer needs and avoiding the disclosure of sensitive proprietary information.
For example, instead of: “Our microservices architecture uses this specific message queue and data serialization format.”, share: “We adopted a microservices architecture to enhance modularity and scalability. The setup allows for independent development and deployment of features, potentially affecting agility.”
This gives an idea of your overall system design without disclosing specific details.
Also, answering the following questions will help you find the balance between transparency and protecting your intellectual property:
– Does this information offer value to my audience without compromising my competitive advantage?
– Am I sharing too much detail that could be replicated by competitors?
– Is this information valuabe for my audience to understand my journey and progress?
Free Content Calendar Template for Building SaaS in Public
Plan and organize your Building in Public content strategy. Organize your:
-
channels
-
topics
-
and goals!
Know When to Adjust
Building in public is most effective during the initial stages of your SaaS journey. As your product matures and your business grows, you may need to adjust your strategy.
- Shift your focus: Transition from building in public to content marketing or community building.
- Maintain transparency: Continue sharing updates and engaging with your audience, but adjust the level of detail and frequency.
- Focus on customer success: Share case studies, testimonials, and success stories to demonstrate the value of your product.
- Lack of engagement? – Try different content formats, ask questions, and run polls to encourage engagement.
- Feeling overwhelmed? – Start with one or two channels and gradually expand as you become more comfortable.
- Facing negativity? Creating a supportive community demands engagement and an atmosphere of constructive conversation.
- Struggling with consistency? – Schedule dedicated time for content creation and use tools to automate posting.
@levelsio: Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List and Remote OK, emphasizes transparency and access to knowledge.
@patio11: Patrick McKenzie provides commentary on elements relevant to establishing and expanding SaaS ventures.
Concluzie
Publicly documenting the development journey might impact audience loyalty and early user attraction for SaaS creators, although the extent of the impact may vary. This guide emphasizes setting objectives, identifying target audiences, and choosing the optimal channels for interaction. Authenticity, valuable content creation, and consistent public engagement may affect the success of SaaS businesses.
Întrebări frecvente
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Building in public is when you openly share the journey of creating a SaaS product. This entails giving updates on your progress, challenges, successes, and sometimes your revenue numbers. Transparency and audience participation are key to weaving a compelling narrative together.
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While there is a risk of theft, building in public can actually deter it. By documenting your progress, you’re creating a public record of your work. Concentrate on building a community and executing your ideas, because these are harder to replicate than the idea itself.
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Be transparent, but there is no need to share every detail. Emphasize helpful insights, lessons learned, and your general progress without providing sensitive details such as your source code or algorithms.
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The best platforms will depend on your target audience. While threads and real-time updates contribute to the popularity of Twitter, other features also influence user engagement. Also consider blogs, community forums like Indie Hackers, LinkedIn, and YouTube for video updates.
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These metrics depend on your specific goals. If your goal is to attract users, monitor website traffic, sign-ups, and social media engagement. If you aim to attract investors, measure investor interest and engagement with your content.
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